Conserving Intact Rainforest for Orangutans

There are fewer than 14,000 Sumatran orangutans and fewer than 800 Tapanuli orangutans left in the wild. These species are Critically Endangered, and already in a precarious position. At the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indonesian government made the choice to protect orangutans and the guides who lead tourists through the national parks by closing national parks to tourists. This was the right thing to do, but it has had unintended negative consequences.

With no furlough scheme for the guides who are now out of work at Bukit Lawang, Tangkahan and Ketambe (three tourist sites in the Leuser Ecosystem), the income supporting their families has disappeared overnight. Their food security is tenuous, and they don’t know when visitors will be allowed to return.

In the first phase of our appeal to help the guides and their families, we raised money to buy emergency food parcels for 558 families in Bukit Lawang, Ketambe and Tangkahan. We now want to raise money to provide a longer-term support system for guides and their families, who are still affected by the pandemic’s disastrous impact on tourism.

Phase 2: Forest-Friendly Livelihoods

By raising money to plant trees in the buffer zone around Gunung Leuser National Park, we can provide an income to guides and their families by paying people for these jobs:

• tree-planting
• transporting seedlings and other materials
• maintaining seedlings once they are planted out in the buffer zone
• making eco poly-bags from banana trunk fibres (poly-bags are what the seedlings are first planted in at the nursery stage)

We know from satellite deforestation monitoring data that there has been an increase in deforestation in some parts of Sumatra, and an increase in people setting snares to capture animals for food. We can make a reasonable assumption that the increase in deforestation and poaching attempts is a direct result of economic hardship, so raising money to support people during the COVID-19 pandemic is an important part of our work to conserve intact rainforest.

Thank you for your support. You are helping us to ensure that Sumatra's rainforests, wildlife and people can thrive.

You may remember that we launched an appeal back in early June to help guides in the Leuser Ecosystem who had lost all their income due to the closure of Indonesia's national parks to protect people and orangutans from COVID19.

Thanks to our donors' incredible generosity, we've raised £9,677.96 for our appeal to provide food packages to guides in the Leuser Ecosystem so far. Not only has this helped hundreds of guides and their families in a practical way; it has also reminded them they are important to us, and that our conservation focus doesn't mean we would ever exclude people or forget about their wants and needs. 

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support - both for this appeal and for our project work in general. You are making a difference.

The photos shown in this report were taken in Tangkahan and Bukit Lawang, and all the people featured have given their consent for the photos to be shared.

Links:

• Guide Appeal FAQs