Orangutan Awareness in Borneo - ‘planting trees for the future’

Togu Simorangkir, director of Yayorin (Yayasan Orangutan Indonesia), our local partners, sent through some photo’s of their Orangutan Awareness Week activities.  Yayorin's theme for Orangutan Awareness Week 2009 is ‘Planting trees for the future’. They are targeting villages surrounding areas of orangutan habitat.

 

School Presentation - photo © Yayorin

Their school campaign involves presentations, mobile library, film show, quiz and games.

 

 Quiz and games - photo © Yayorin

Mobile library - photo © Yayorin

At the community level they have organised an exhibition, puppet show and film show. 

 

Film show - photo © Yayorin

 

 

Puppet show - photo © Yayorin

On Sunday 15 November, Yayorin we will be planting trees in Tanjung Putri village and in the Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve buffer zone. In total about 1500 trees will be planted by students and communities. 

 

Seedlings to be planted - photo © Yayorin

Yayorin will also be promoting “cheap in your own land” - a campaign to change the slash and burn agriculture method to sustainable permanent agriculture. 

 

Yayorin's Orangutan Awareness Week 2009 badge 'planting trees for the future', which they produce and give away for free.

We'll post about what we've been up to in the UK tomorrow, Orange for Orangutan Day - go on, go orange and support our work, it's not too late!

Thanks,

Cathy

Orangutan Foundation - UK office

Promoting Forests at Sukamara Fair, Indonesian Borneo

From the 17^th to 24^th October 2009, our EC-Lamandau Programme, together with the Environment Office of Sukamara (town on the Western side of Lamandau reserve), has been participating in the Sukamara Fair 2009. Our EC-Lamandau exhibition booth really stood out. It was a cheerful display with a drawing and coloring competition for children from the ages of 5 to 11 years old. 

 

Children joining in at the EC-Lamandau stand at the Sukamara Fair

We had an enthusiastic response when the orangutan and deer mascots suddenly arrived. Both mascots told stories about their life in the forest and a lively conversation arose between the mascots and the visitors, including kids! At least 600 stickers and 200 Sumpitan bulletins (local magazine published by Yayorin) were distributed to exhibition visitors and for three evenings, films on conservation education were screened.

The progamme, also called the Lamandau Ecosystem Conservation Partnership (LECP) is funded by the European Commission to maintain functioning tropical forest ecosystems in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, which support sustainable rural development. The Partnership comprises the Conservation of Nature Resources Agency of Central Borneo (BKSDA), Yayorin and the Orangutan Foundation. 

   

 Leaves of Hope writen by exhibition visitors

The Head of Sukamara Regency, Ahmad Dirman listened to a brief explanation about our forest protection and community outreach work that has been implemented by Orangutan Foundation and Yayorin. He also wrote on a ‘leaf of hope’ which was hung on a branch in the exhibition.

 Ahmad Dirman encouraged the people of Sukamara to support any institutions that work on forest and environment conservation. He proudly accepted a framed orangutan photo (by Brian Matthews who was awarded highly commended in BBC wildlife photographer of the year 2009) brought from London by Ashley Leiman, the Orangutan Foundation Director. 

Thank you for your interest,

Astri - Liaison Officer

Sumatran Orangutan Footage

Please follow this link to view a short piece on the Sumatran orangutans, with a focus on the Tripa Swamps, Aceh, Sumatra that appeared in Times.com. http://www.time.com/time/audioslide/0,32187,1926657,00.html

Orangutan Foundation Volunteer Programme

You're probably aware that the Orangutan Foundation runs a Volunteer Programme (see Categories for past posts)  This year's programme has been different in that we are working closely with our partners Yayorin on a water purification project in the Belantikan Arut region of Central Kalimantan. Belantikan is home to the largest remaning population of orangutans in an unprotected area and is a biodiversity hotspot. 

Our strategy involves community empowerment, education and agricultural management to help villagers protect their forests. This year’s Volunteer Programme fits in by working with the local communities and further improving our relationship with them, whilst gaining their respect and providing villagers with a cleaner, safer water-source.  Each team will work in a different village. At each village, a natural spring has been identified as an alternative source to the river which is currently used for transport, bathing, washing and as a toilet. The teams build a dam to harness the spring water and then a pipe system takes it down to the village.

Climbing back up to the jetty after a hard days work 

Team 1 ended on 13^th June and the village of Nanga Matu (home to Yayorin’s basecamp) now has taps providing clean water from a natural hillside spring on the other side of the river. The construction was no mean feat and massive thanks go to the hardworking volunteers and Volunteer Co-ordinators who made the project succeed.   Team 2 is already well into their work in the village of Bintang Mengalih and I was there to see the project commence. The team are living in a small community house where personal space is non- existent, and the movements and activities of us visitors is of most interest to the locals.

 

Volunteers are treated to a traditional party by a local village 

Whilst there, I encountered leeches, a scorpion, poisonous millipedes and lots of peat. Bathing is in a nearby river and we dug a long-drop toilet behind the accommodation. Before work began we had to go the village hall and formally meet the village head and some local villagers.

 

Local children were keen to "hang out" with the volunteers. 

The village were so appreciative of our work that they provided us with four local people to help on the project. They really were very excited and grateful about the work of Orangutan Foundation.  By 8^th August Bintang Mengalih will have clean water to drink at the turn of a tap!!

Thanks, 

Elly (UK Volunteer Co-ordinator)

Lesson by MELU on Forest and Orangutan Conservation

Recently the Mobile Education and Library Unit (MELU), from our EC funded Lamandau Project, visited a local school to give a lesson about forest and orangutan conservation. More than 200 students of SMP 7 Middle First School in Pasir Panjang Village, Central kalimantan assembled in front of their school.    

 Enthusiasm was etched on their face as they listened to what Fadlik, our educator, had to say. The school yard, though clean, was barren with no big trees growing. So under the hot morning sun, Fadlik enthusiastically invited all the students to learn and understand the important of the forest and orangutan.    

Many questions were asked by the children including why forest and orangutan must be conserved, and what was the difference between orangutan and monkey?

  

Teachers watched the interaction between Fadlik and their students with interest. The teachers said their students must learn about conservation.  We hope the student’s love for their forests, their orangutans and other wild animals will increase with these efforts.

Compost and Forests - both important to our life cycles!

Meet Pak Roji.

Pak Roji at the market

He works on the Education Team for our Lamandau Ecosystem Conservation Partnership, as our Community Liaison. Pak Roji’s passionate about all things mouldy, and organic!

He’s our compost expert, with a background in chemistry, and at least a decade of farming experience in Java. He currently works with the farmers collectives in four villages by the Western boundary of the Lamandau Reserve, to help improve their crops by applying compost. Earlier in the week I visited Pak Roji in Sukamara, with the Head of our Education Team, Eddie, and our Liaison Officer, Astri, to meet up with local government officials to discuss about our plans to commence a compost project in the town.

Eddie rescues some seedlings that would have been burnt along with the garbage, to be planted at our office in Sukamara.

You may wonder how compost ties into orangutan conservation – and I’d say that wildlife conservation overall is holistic: assisting local communities to find alternative sustainable livelihoods that are still culturally relevant, is vital in obtaining their continuing support for the Reserve. The sandy soils that these farmers work on are nutritionally-poor, and organic composts help increase the yield of crops, while decreasing pressure on the local dump-site. Working one on one with farmers at the Western boundary of the Reserve have yielded small successes, and we hope to see this grow.

So far, the response has been encouraging, and we have received a lot of comments and advice from respective government officers from various fields. Our hopes for this project is that it is community-driven, with farmers benefitting from the harvest.

Eddie, our Education Team Leader, discusses land options with the Village Head of Natai Sedawak, Pak Nadi

We also met up with the village head from Natai Sedawak, to discuss possibilities on where the compost project could take place. He took us to various sites, including the local garbage dump that reminded us why this project is crucial!

Astri, our Liaison Officer, demonstrates the height of the garbage pile

I believe everybody in his or her lifetime, needs to visit their local dumpsite and understand how our daily consumption affects the rest of the community, and the world.

Pak Roji hard at work!

I’ll keep you in touch on how this project develops over time, but rest assured, Pak Roji continues to churn the soil to keep all organic waste wonderful and mouldy!

Thanks,

June

Our Earth Day Celebrations.

On the 22nd April Orangutan Foundation and Yayorin celebrated Earth Day with students from various schools at Sukamara, which lies close to the western part of the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve.

Together with the Yayorin Education Team, the school children took part in a full-day of activities, starting with ‘socialization’ or getting to know each other through a series of games, stickers and magazine were distributed. As well, it wouldn’t be Earth Day without any seedlings being planted! Together, the students planted 60 seeds from four indigenous plants at the Danau Burung Post.

The day ended with a film screening open to all, regardless of age, of various environment-related films, including a popular local film called “Laskar Pelangi” or Rainbow Warriors.

Environmental film screenings

Thanks,

June

Saving orangutans in Indonesia

Orangutan Foundation and Yayorin recently hosted Jason Houston and William deBuys, photographer and writer for the conservation organisation RARE and below is a blog about their visit to Lamandau Wildlife Reserve, Kampung Konservasi and the surrounding village communities. http://www.rareconservation.org/blog/

Kampung Konservasi (March/April) - A new mobile library!

On Tuesday, 24 March 2009, Yayorin (Yayasan Orangutan Indonesia) received a wonderful donation of MOBIL BACA (mobile library) from PT Hino Motor Sales Indonesia (Hino) to support its education efforts, in areas close to orangutan habitat, in Central Kalimantan Indonesian Borneo.

Mobil Baca - Kampung Konservasi's new bus.

Hino has already donated similar buses to other NGOs in Indonesia, and this year Yayorin was chosen as one of the recipients. The bus was specifically made to suit Yayorin’s need, and is equipped with seats in front and book shelves at the back.

The hand-over ceremony took place in Sampit, a bigger city, which is a four hour drive from Pangkalan Bun. Mrs. Aulia Reksoatmodjo, a board member of Yayorin and Togu Simorangkir, Yayorin Director attended the ceremony. Hino presented Yayorin with a symbolic key, while Yayorin showed its appreciation by giving Hino a carved orangutan wood statue.

Presentation of the symbolic key to Yayorin.

Presentation parade

The bus will hopefully start operating this month. We are looking forward to getting out on the road and distributing our conservation education message and materials to the local population.

Mrs. Aulia Reksoatmodjo (on far left), a board member of Yayorin and Togu Simorangkir (far right), Yayorin Director.

Thank you,

Sally -Yayorin

Kampung Konservasi February Blog - Garbage!

The smoke from garbage burning started to hurt our eyes...million of flies swarmed around us...and the unmistakable aroma of garbage welcomed us as we drove into this local waste collecting location. A trash-picker moved quickly passed us toward the incoming yellow garbage truck; he wanted to be the first to find anything inside that he could sell.

Burning garbage at Pasir Panjang waste collection centre.

Student participating in Yayorin's environmental extracurricular activity seemed a little bit bewildered this afternoon. The main subject of today’s discussion was garbage – its role on the environment, its problems and management. It was obvious that they had never seen as much garbage in their lives and probably felt quite overwhelmed by it.

Most of the students did not even know that such place exists in their city. Many could not even say where the garbage they produced at home or at school went to. In the beginning, they were not happy being ”dragged” into this disgusting place and could not stand the smell. With the passing of time, though, they started to understand why we brought them there and involved entusiastically in the learning process.

In this meeting we asked them to identify the types of garbage they could find in an area of 1m x 1m. They then had to identify which ones were organic and which were inorganic. They were also asked to pay attention to how the garbage was collected, transported and managed.

The Pasir Panjang Waste Collecting Location is the largest in this city and its surrounding areas. This is where all of the waste of the city finally goes to. Unfortunately, like most garbage collecting locations in Indonesia, the concept of garbage management is through burning. What was ironic was the big sign we saw there that clearly said "Do Not Burn the Garbage"!

The students had a tour around the Location. They found an abandoned composting house, filtering pond and a monitoring well. The well was located about 50 meters from the collection area, and the water inside was quite clean. It was supposed to mean that the soil water was in good condition.

The students took home with them a valuable learning experience. We hope that now they realise where their garbage goes, and how the waste can put a really heavy burden on the environment. Next time they want to throw their garbage on the street or anywhere else inappropriate, we wish they will stop and remember their unique experience at the ”garbage place”.

Thanks,

Riyandoko and Sally (Yayasan Orangutan Indonesian www.yayorin.org)

Double Our Funds For Orangutans

To celebrate the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, a philanthropist organisation, The Reed Foundation, has promised to double any donations made to five different wildlife charities through its charity website www.theBigGive.org.uk. The Orangutan Foundation is delighted to be one of the chosen charities and donations will go towards our project 'Protecting Orangutans and Rainforest Biodiversity Through Carbon Markets' in the Belantikan Arut region of Central Kalimantan. On Monday 23rd February at 10am The Big Give will start doubling donations of £5 or more and they will finish when £50,000 has been spent. Please be as generous as possible on the 23rd February, when every donation can go twice as far to achieve our aims in the Belantikan Arut region of Central Kalimantan

Put a note in your diary or an alert on your mobile and just before 10am have your bankcard at hand and simply visit www.thebiggive.co.uk. There will be a 'Darwin's Natural Selection' link in the matched funding area of the Big Give.

The money will be allocated on a first come, first served basis, so it is important that you make your donations as soon as possible after the launch of the scheme. The last time The Big Give ran a scheme of this nature, they gave away one million pounds in 45 minutes!

Thank you!!

Kampung Konservasi January Blog - Sustainable livelihoods for communities living close to areas of orangutan habitat.

FISH HARVEST One of the alternative income-generating activities that Kampung Konservasi offers the local communities is low-impact fish farming. On Kampung Konservasi ground, we have three very simple fish ponds, which are – literally – just “big holes” on the ground.

The three different styles of simple fishponds demonstrated by Kampung Konservasi.

Because our ground is naturally “wet” (mostly peat swamp), we do not have to do much to regulate the water flows. We just worked with the land contour and designed our ponds so that they are as low maintenance as possible. This way, local farmers can easily duplicate our methods and feel interested to try because it does not require much commitment from their part. To fortify the walls, we used simple materials such as bamboos, sand bags and polybags filled with vegetable seedlings.

We then put two species of fish in our ponds: one is nila, a consumption fish species that originally came from Africa but has become very common all over the world; another one is patin, a local Kalimantan species that has also become a very common consumption fish species. Both have been doing very well in our ponds, although our patin grow a little better and faster in semi-peat swamp water.

Encouraging community participation and the uptake of this low-impact fish farming.

Patin - common species of fish found in Kalimantan, Borneo

Just recently Kampung Konservasi decided to empty its fish ponds because we wanted to fix the walls. We did not expect that there will be so much fish! In only this one harvest, we managed to sell 56 kilograms of fish to the local housewives and restaurants. In 2008 alone, our alternative fish farm produced more than 200 kilograms of fish and sold well in the local market. Once again, Kampung Konservasi have proven to the local communities that fish farming is another potential income-generating activity for this area.

Thanks,

Sally (Yayorin)

Thank you and more on the crocodile.

Firsly, Mike S thank you very much for your recent donation. Please bear with me I will blog more about orangutans soon but first I'd like to reply to Dana and Sheryl who commented on my last post Endangered crocodile species kills local man. I agree it was a sad end for this crocodile that had lived for over 50 years and is an endangered species. As soon as I saw the photographs of her caught and dead, I realised how old she must have been. The cynic in me is surprised she lived as long as she did. The pragmatist in me knows, as soon as she took the man, her life would probably be short. Here, in Kalimantan, for the people who live on and from the rivers or forest, nature is a little more redder in tooth and claw than it is for those of us who deal with emails, traffic jams and income tax returns. An eye for an eye – even between people – remains acceptable.

Even if we had been informed straight away, there would have been next to nothing we could have done. In no way are we equipped to deal with the capture and translocation of a reptile – especially one almost 5m long. Moreover, none of our staff could have calmed the crowd that went out on the hunt.

The crocodile had apparently been seen before. How, when and where has been harder to find out, especially in this case, when our questions inevitably carry the sense “What was the man thinking of? It is partly his fault.”

As with snakes and spiders, almost universally crocodiles get bad press. Tomistoma normally eat fish – hence their elongated snout – so people do not seem too concerned about them. That all changed when the crocodile attacked. By catching the right crocodile, we can hope no further action will be taken against other Tomistoma. Certainly, the attack has not unleashed indiscriminate slaughter of all crocodiles.

By encouraging Devis (Manager - Pondok Ambung Research Station) to write up this case we can hopefully understand more about the attack and learn the right lessons. Tomistoma are fish specialists but it should not be surprising they are capable of eating people too. However they should not be given the title ‘man-eaters’ but should just be treated with respect.

Apologies for the length of this post; complex and emotional issues can’t be explained succinctly. I am just happy I have electricity tonight, so I can keep typing.

Here's an orangutan picture to end on. I think this is a great photo, it was taken by Hugh Sturrock at Camp Leakey a good few years ago.

Endangered crocodile species kills local man

I am afraid orangutans won’t feature in this post. Unfortunately, I am writing about something rather sombre. On the 31st December a local man was killed and eaten by a large crocodile. A group of people went out the same night to look for the man and the crocodile but found neither. The next day they called on a pawang or shaman who has the ability to call crocodiles. He worked his magic and within 17 hours of the attack the crocodile was caught and killed; it was almost 5m long and must have been over 50 years old. Inside were the remains of the man.

The Malaysian False Gharial (Tomistoma schlegeli) that killed and ate a local man.

What makes this interesting, as well as tragic, is the crocodile was a Malaysian False Gharial (Tomistoma schlegeli). You may remember last year (A VERY RARE CROCODILE), Rene Bonke was out here studying them. They are one of the crocodile species never reported to have attacked people. Because of this, we need to write up the case. Devis, Pondok Ambung Manager, has been leading the investigation and yesterday we went out to look at the site where the attack occurred.

It isn't surprising Tomistoma kill people. What surprised me was the river where the attack happened. It was an ordinary, peaceful, black-water creek, not 15 minutes upstream from town. It was identical to literally dozens of such rivers that I have seen, been up, even waded across. Never once did it occur to me that such a large Tomistoma might live there. They are an endangered species and you rarely see them.

Being in that place, where I knew someone had died, gave me pause. But behind that was a wonder; a wonder that in this era of chainsaws, speedboats and wanton habitat destruction, an animal of such size could have survived for so long.

For more information about Tomistoma please visit Tomistoma Task Force

Volunteering in Belantikan - A Dayak Perspective

During our time in Belantikan we were also fortunate enough to have the opportunity to have some long conversations with some of the older villagers about their way of life. We visited the ladang of Pak Taryom outside the village of Nanga Matu, to see the new crops he is cultivating with Yayorin’s help and find out how their new methods are bringing benefits to the area.

Pak Taryom in his ladang near Nanga Matu, cultivation here has been much changed with Yayorin's help

Pak Taryom also explained to us about the traditions and ceremonies of the Dayak people. His brother, Pak Maju, is the last man of Nanga Matu refusing to convert to one of the five state approved faiths of Indonesia and still clinging to Kaharingan – the traditional Dayak religion. He is also the father of Yayorin’s cook Ani, the youngest of his seven daughters.

Pak Maju lives outside Nanga Matu and, on our last day in Belantikan, we went to visit him at his ladang tucked away inside the forest. He’s 58 years old and still working in the fields. We found him sat under a tarpaulin sheet in the centre of his ladang, a thin line of smoke twisting to the sky from the fire he was sitting by chewing tobacco rolled in leaves, a rifle and a long knife by his side. I got a little perturbed at one stage during our conversation when he turned to me and mimed pulling off my head and drew his knife. Although it turned out, via translation, that he was just explaining that when a Dayak is angry they can pull off an enemy’s head with their bare hands without recourse to a blade.

Pak Maju - Nanga Matu's last adherent of the Kaharingan religion in his ladang

Pak Maju also told us how the villagers of Nanga Matu and Bintang Mengalih still come to see him and ask him to summon the spirits to grant their wishes. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that he could accept the end of the Kaharingan culture, religion being in his mind a matter of personal choice. He could not, however, accept the destruction of the forest. When we asked him what he thought of it he told us that the balance of life has been upset and ‘when the trees and the hills are all gone [to logging and mining] the people will all die.’. The world around Pak Maju is changing so fast that his fears for the forest, and everything that lives within it, could be realised within his lifetime.

We left Belantikan full of great memories. The work of the Orangutan Foundation, Yayorin and the local communities to protect this area for the benefit of people, orangutans and the forest continues.

Thank you,

David

Volunteering in Belantikan - Working with the forest

The Dayak people of Belantikan have lived with the forest as subsistence farmers for centuries and still it thrives. They carve out their small field (ladang) in the forest for cultivation and occasionally venture into the interior to hunt and gather other food to supplement their diet. However, some of their other practices for example, traditional slash and burn agriculture, unnecessarily destroy patches of forest annually. As the amount of available primary forest shrinks year on year due to the incursions of logging, palm oil and mining, it’s more and more important to ensure that the agricultural methods of the people living in the forest are as sustainable as possible. Therefore, Yayorin is working to introduce new practices for the benefit of the forest and the people, showing the villagers how they can continue to use the same field year on year. Introducing the cultivation of rubber, which takes five years to mature, means that the villagers cannot simply burn the field after they have harvested their vegetables, and this benefits the forest. The production of rubber is also beneficial to the people as it provides them with a long-term continuous income source. The vast majority of farmers across the three villages have already started to cultivate rubber, significantly reducing the use of slash and burn.

Rubber Training - Photo: Yayorin ("We do not have full-scale rubber cultivation. What we do is agroforestry with rubber as main plants. In the agroforestry system, we mix different plants in one area like vegetables, fruit trees, gaharu and rubber. This way, the community can enjoy the short and long harvest" - Togu Simorangkir, Chairman of Yayorin).

Yayorin’s community development and empowerment work is also helping the villagers to recognise that the long-term value of the forest is more precious than the short-term rewards that could be gained by surrendering their traditional land to those who would destroy it in the interests of quick profit. The benefit of this strand of Yayorin’s work was shown in June 2006, when the villagers of Kahingai chose to reject an astounding offer of 30 million rupiah per family to sell their land to a palm oil company.

Volunteering In Belantikan - An Absolute Pleasure To Teach

As part of Yayorin’s programme of conservation and community empowerment they are also prioritizing improving education generally for the villagers. It’s this aspect of the programme, and the communities’ request for English language teaching, that led us to go to Belantikan to work in the village schools. Living in Belantikan for one month was an absolute privilege and teaching the children an absolute pleasure. They were a joy to work with, keen and enthusiastic, and seeing them go in one month from speaking no English to confidently expressing themselves in their new language showed the enormous potential they have.

Class 3 and 4 in Bintang Mengalih after English class.

It was also funny to hear how the children of these remote villages picked up touches of our distinctive Liverpool accent in their spoken English, which might sound a bit odd to any future English visitors who stop to chat to them. The children also seemed to really enjoy the lessons, although some of their teachers looked a bit bemused watching their students dancing around outside class singing “if you’re happy and you know it clap your hands” or the “happy days theme tune”.

When we were leaving Kahingai after our last lesson there some of the children followed us down to where our boat was waiting on the river. We asked them if they’d rather leave the village behind and go to live in England and they said no. I think their quality of life here, living in this beautiful forest is better, I hope it remains that way.

Volunteering in Belantikan - The Morning Commute

Its 6:30 on the 3rd December and we’re on our morning commute to work. Our boat is cutting its way through the rapids of the river and we’re on the look out for crocodiles lurking on the banks.

Morning commute - the rapid at Nanga Matu the starting point for the morning commute to work!

On the river - mist over the Belantikan river on the early morning journey to work.

On this early morning a mist still hangs over the top of the forest-covered hills on either side of the river. All around us the forest still thrives, providing sufficient sustenance for both the huge range of wildlife and the small village communities that have made this beautiful corner of Kalimantan their home. We are on the way to teach in one of these villages, Kahingai, and it’s the most incredible commute to work I could ever imagine, but sad too to think what this might be like in five years time if the fate of the forest here follows much of the rest of Kalimantan.

Our journey up to Belantikan from Pangkalan Bun, one month ago, showed us what the future might hold for the forest here. Passing us on the road heading back to town were the biggest trees I’ve ever seen, all stacked up two by two on the trucks that filed past in a long procession. Further piles of enormous dead trunks, neatly stripped of all unnecessary leaves and branches, lay by the side of the road awaiting transportation.

Logging concession - destruction of the forest on the road to Belantikan

Rampant logging was only part of the problem; most of the journey out was through oil palm plantations, with the neat ranks of oil palm advancing into the former territory of the wild forest. The new plantation is a parody of the original forest, providing no home to the orangutan or other animals, and when the planters have finished they leave a land degraded that can never become forest again. If Borneo was once a Garden of Eden then what has been done to the trees here makes stealing a bit of fruit look very innocent indeed.

Oil Palm Plantations on the way to Belantikan (Photo: Orangutan Foundation)

We were fortunate enough on our journey up to Belantikan to have an unscheduled overnight stop off in a richer part of the jungle when our van, swerving to avoid a fallen tree, got stuck in the mud.

Our accomodation for a night in the jungle, a van stuck in a ditch.

The accommodation, on the back seat of a van sunken on one side into a deep muddy ditch, wasn’t the most comfortable, but it was amazing to wake up with the dawn to a chorus of gibbons in the trees overhead. We were also lucky enough to see a deer flash across our path to disappear into the trees on the other side of the road. We were still in the territory of the logging concession that envelops Belantikan, but in a relatively untouched part of the forest. A well-policed logging concession can actually be considered the lesser of three evils, and there are fears of what might happen to Belantikan when the concession expires in 2012 if the twin terrors of illegal logging and palm oil move in en masse. It raises the question, what will be left when the children we are teaching today have grown up?

Volunteering in Belantikan

The Belantikan Hulu ecosystem in Central Kalimantan is a priority conservation area for Orangutan Foundation and their partner Yayorin. The still surviving dense forest there is home to an incredible diversity of species, including the largest population of wild orangutans outside of a protected area. Belantikan Conservation Programme focuses on both researching and cataloguing the wildlife of the area and working with the local communities to develop ways to maintain their traditional lifestyles without having a detrimental impact on the forest ecosystem. As part of Yayorin’s capacity building educational programme Catherine Burns and myself, former Orangutan Foundation volunteers, travelled to Belantikan to work with Yayorin as English teachers in the schools of the villages of Nanga Matu, Kahingai and Bintang Mengalih. Orangutan Foundation invited me to blog about our time there and the ongoing struggle to save this precious part of the Borneo forest. You can read my account of our experience over the next week.

Thanks,

David Hagan

School Visit to Kampung Konservasi

"By listening I know; By seeing I understand; By doing I make a difference.” The children enthusiastically approached the two cows in their stable. In their hands were the newly-cut, fresh, green leaves. They waited impatiently for their turns, and their face lit up when the cows ate the leaves.

Feeding the cows is probably a simple and common thing for those who live in small villages and have cows. For these children from Islam Terpadu Elementary School, however, this simple thing became an extraordinary experience. It was probably the first time they ever saw a cow in their life. The participants on this visit were 1st grade students, 55 of them, and 5 of their teachers.

Feeding the cows was one of education activities we conducted during this school visit at Yayorin's Kampung Konservasi. This outdoor learning focuses to integrate knowledge the children learn from school with some field experiences. This way, students not only understand the theories and facts, but most importantly, understand and respect the knowledge they receive.

Another activity that the children found very exciting was when they were asked to plant vegetable seeds. This time, they planted pokchai ( a type of vegetable similar to chinese spinach) in black polybags. With enthusiasm they grabbed handfuls of soil that was already mixed with organic compost and put it in the polybags. Each of them made a little hole on the soil with a finger, put one seed in it, and covered it with soil. Finally, they carefully watered the planted seeds. The children really loved it!

Other than feeding the cows and planting vegetable seeds, the children also watched an environmental movie in our little theatre and listened to story-telling in the library. The morning passed by very quickly, and everybody was sad when we had to say goodbye.

Kampung Konservasi tries to use nature as a learning ”canvas”...where simplicity and friendship with the environment are keys to understanding and respect. By giving opportunities for young people to express themselves and learn by doing, we are actually influencing their behaviors and future choices. In the long run, we hope that they can then influence others around them, including the adults. When that happens, the world will definitely be a better place!

Thank you,

Riyandoko (Education Facilitator) & Sally (Yayorin)