Orangutan Foundation

Category: Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve, Local Communities | Date: Jun 27 2008 | By: orangutanfoundation

Following on from my last post “Busy, busy, busy”, here’s some more detail about the illegal farming. The farm was obviously productive and well-maintained. It had a fence around it to keep out wild pigs and deer. Inside, bananas, rice, cassava and a number of vegetables were all growing well. Indeed, if our agricultural demonstration plots looked that good we could be justifiably proud.

Illegal farm inside Lamandau Wildlife Reserve

But there was one big problem with this farm – it is inside the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve. It is obvious from the surrounding forest the farmers were not making use of fallow land, as we try to do with the demonstration farms. No, here, they had cleared the forest and then burnt it to boost soil fertility.

Note the surrounding tree-line.

This situation gives us a problem, as there is no real alternative to evicting them. We do not wish to have a confrontation with the surrounding villages; one of our aims is to establish harmonious relations between the neighbouring communities and conservation areas. However, if there is a flagrant violation of the law, as in this case, there is little that can be done. The farmers can not be allowed to continue. They are clearly damaging the forest, increasing the risk of forest fires and would almost certainly persecute any wildlife that took to crop raiding.

Once forest, now farm land.

Technically, the farmers could be arrested, but pragmatically this would only inflame local sensibilities and even the police would be reluctant to arrest someone for (as they will see it) “just growing food”. The balancing act facing us, therefore, is to get the people out of the Reserve without turning their whole village against us but, at the same time, creating a strong enough front to deter anyone else from attempting to farm there. The Forestry Department officials, under whose auspices we work, have suggested giving the farmers six months to complete the current harvest after which they must leave.

This seems reasonable. We can easily monitor them to make sure there is no further expansion or burning. We can also make use of this time to erect a signboard/ block on the river the farmers are using for access to prevent anyone else from saying “I did not know it was a Conservation Area”.

It is worrying that people still do not respect Lamandau’s borders but it is encouraging that our patrols clearly have good enough ground coverage that they were able to detect the farm and, secondly, that the Forestry Department has the resolve to deal with it. A strong display now will go along way to reducing such incidents in the future.

- P.S. Brigitta, thank you for the comment. It is a pity about the video question and answer session, but it will still be good to meet up. As I said, I will be at Pondok Ambung or Camp Leakey on the 10th, so we’ll meet up then. Safe travels!

Tags: Borneo, Illegal Activities, Indonesia, Protected Forests

2 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jun 23 2008 | By: orangutanfoundation

Hi Sheryl

We aren’t sure why it says ‘comments closed’ on Stephen’s last post -I don’t think we have done anything wrong our end! Wildlife Direct are looking into it and hopefully it will be resolved soon.

Many thanks,

Cathy, Orangutan Foundation

3 responses so far

Category: Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve, Oil Palm Plantations, Volunteer Programme | Date: Jun 20 2008 | By: orangutanfoundation

Once again, I find myself in the unenviable position of having to apologise for the long silence.  I know I have neglected to keep you up to date with all that is going on in orangutan-land.  If I have an excuse it is only that I have been struggling to keep up myself.  June has looked like this: 

 (Supply boat after it was refloated, repaired and painted)

First week:  Five straight days in the field investigating a case of illegal farming inside the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve, which is when I managed to get Jak hopelessly lost (or vice-versa as I still maintain!) followed by a meeting with the mangers of one of the palm-oil plantations which border the Reserve.  After that, we continued onto Sukamara, the next district capital, where we are establishing an office. 

Second week: To Jakarta where Astri, I and representatives of seven other projects attended a coordination meeting with the European Commission Delegation prior to the opening of the Indonesia Environment Week exhibition.  If nothing else, the meeting made us proud our little project is holding its own at the sharp end.  I also met with the director of a company which conducts bio-carbon surveys.  Many people are talking about trying to protect forests through carbon-offsets, or Reduced Emissions through avoided Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) projects, but very little is actually happening on the ground. That is a ring into which we want to throw our hat – Belantikan is a stand-out candidate for protection.  For a taste of what this involves have a look at http://www.climate-standards.org/ and follow the links to “Climate, Community & Biodiversity Project Design Standards, Draft Second Edition”.  Finally, I met with the coordinators of the cross border, USAID funded project we are working on. 

Third week:  Should have been back in the office attending to paperwork, but it did not turn out that way!  Our supply boat was battered in heavy seas, made it to the Buluh Besar guard post then promptly sank.  Our supervisor, Teguh, was apologetic but he really needn’t have been: clearly not his fault.  I also went back to Lamandau to check on progress at the new release camp which the volunteers are building.  Then, last weekend, I went up to Pondok Ambung to have a few days with the crocodile researcher.

In between there was the usual mix of staff management issues (how do you budget for out-of-the-blue double digit inflation?); an audit; a volunteer with a horribly infected leg derived from over-zealous scratching of mosquito bites and my Indonesian counter-part saying he can’t continue to work in Borneo with his wife – who is expecting their first child – still in Java.  He has been like a second limb to me, and his departure is big blow.

I am sure like many other people reading this blog, my problem is trying to juggle too many balls at the same time. A problem which is made worse by my being a mere male who is genetically incapable of multi-tasking!  The up-side, however, is that I did manage to sneak up to Camp Leakey to see Uning the daughter of one of my favourite orangutans, Unyuk.  Uning has just had her first baby.  It was great to see them.

Many thanks,

Orangutan Foundation

2 responses so far

Category: Orangutan Care Centre & Quarantine, Orangutans | Date: Jun 06 2008 | By: orangutanfoundation

Stephen is currently in Jakarta so a quick post on his behalf.

We have just received our donation’s report for the second half of May and we are extremely grateful to following people who have donated towards the Orangutan Care Centre’s enclosure repairs; Paula B $200, Maciej G $100, Sheryl B $25 and Hilary B $300. In total we have raised $2,375 which means we are only $625 off our $3,000 target. Thank you to everyone who has supported us with this appeal.

For those of you in the UK you might be interested to know the Foundation are holding a Supporters’ and Members’ Evening on Wednesday 2nd July, at Asia House in London. Stephen, who will be back in the UK, and Ashley Leiman, Director and Founder of the Orangutan Foundation, will be giving a presentation about the Foundation’s projects, achievements and challenges. Please visit our website for more details.

Many thanks,

Cathy, Orangutan Foundation.

2 responses so far

Category: Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve, Orangutan Foundation Staff | Date: Jun 04 2008 | By: orangutanfoundation

“Hey Jak” I called over my shoulder “Are you following me or the path?”.

“Following you” Jak replied.

Not good.

I wasn’t leading; I was merely walking in front. For the last 100 odd metres I’d become increasingly convinced we’d left the path and were following a pig’s trail through the forest. It was 5pm. It would be dark in an hour. We were both soaked to the skin and had been walking in ankle deep water for the last twenty minutes, as a result of the afternoon downpour. And a 100 metres may not sound much but given I wasn’t sure of the exact distance our chances of back-tracking weren’t promising.

I remembered there was a tree with unusually large leaves where the proper trail re-entered the forest after crossing the open bit where we were now standing. Jak’s face was a picture when I said “look for a tree with big leaves”. In a forest, right… good idea.

(Example of the forest terrain, without the water!)

Still, I had my revenge. Jak got out his GPS which told us accurately where we were on the earth’s surface and it even told us it was only 2.9km to the guard post. Did it, however, tell us where the path was? The path that would enable us to get through the forest and to the post before nightfall? The path that I had been unable to follow in daylight let alone pitch blackness?

I wanted to turn east along the forest edge, Jak opted for north-west. As I had got us into this mess I decided not to argue and to follow him. Of course, he was right. Consequently, I was secretly delighted when he failed to notice the tree with big leaves and I could call out “here it is” as we crossed the right track.

That was Tuesday evening. We were in the field until Friday…last week was a long one!

Tags: Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve, Rainforest

3 responses so far