Dances with Orangutans, or, The Race to Save the Lowland Tropical Forests of Central Kalimantan
Photographer Jason Houston and writer William deBuys head into the field to see the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve and adjacent buffer zone.
Click here to view Jason’s Lamandau slide show!
My feet are stained yellow from tannins in the water and swollen red from multiple rounds of attack by fire ants. There’s a rash from an unidentified source on my neck, and the small wound where the leech was attached to my shin bleeds profusely each time it gets wet, which out here is all the time. I’ve learned to go to the bathroom without toilet paper (and know to greet and eat with only my right hand), and I now look forward to bathing in the dark, soft, highly-acidic, and relatively cool waters of the Rasau River. Yesterday we awoke to a chorus of hooting gibbons in the distance and, closer by, the raspy response of a flock of hornbills. Each evening ends with one of Borneo’s brief but colorful equatorial sunsets, chased by a lightning storm and followed by the steady drumming of another evening’s rain on the tin roofs.
We’ve spent the last four days boating and trekking through the lowland tropical forests and black-water swamps of Central Kalimantan. After two days in the main town of Pangkalan Bun talking with Hari Kushardanto (Rare’s Senior Pride Program Manager in Indonesia) and Togu Simorangkir and Eddy Santoso from Yayorin (Rare’s local partner in this effort), we began the first of two multi-day excursions into the field. Our goal is to see first-hand the conservation programs, issues, and challenges that make up the complex social and environmental conservation dynamics so common in areas like this, where the needs of people and nature are so inextricably intertwined.
Leading our travels was Stephen Brend of the Orangutan Foundation U.K., along with some of his staff and a ranger from the Central Kalimantan Forest Department. Our plan included visits to an orangutan release camp and several reserve guard posts throughout the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve to see the different landscapes of the protected area, as well as the critically important buffer zone all along its western border.
While the majority of the current biological conservation activities take place inside the boundaries of the protected area of the Reserve, it’s the buffer zone and the surrounding communities that are the primary concern and main focus of Yayorin’s upcoming Pride Campaign. As a potential habitat for orangutans, this buffer zone actually has more viable forest land than the reserve itself; finding some way to keep it natural could add as much as 25,000 ha to the current 54,000 ha of officially protected area. But the area is owned and controlled by the local government and threatened by several large proposed oil palm plantations.
Securing protected status is possible for a small portion of the buffer zone that is surrounded on three sides by the Reserve and could be added to it, but that’s not likely for the majority of the buffer area. If this landscape is to have a future as a healthy forest (and thus as a suitable habitat for orangutans and a sustaining resource for the local communities), that will require new or revived ways of valuing the land.
Since 2007, Yayorin and Orangutan Foundation have been working on the project “Promoting the conservation and sustainable management of the lowland forests of south Central Kalimantan” supported by funding from the European Union. Yayorin’s Pride Campaign in this area will build on the non-governmental organization’s experience providing education, awareness, and empowerment towards sustainable livelihoods. The campaign will focus on the support a healthy forest can provide a community. Also, it plans to coordinate within a larger collaborative framework involving other local and international non-governmental organizations known as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation).
