By Helen Buckland | Director
Earlier this month, wild elephants were spotted in the Besitang restoration site. Like orangutans, elephants roam over large areas, and need a lot of safe habitat in order to survive. The Leuser forests of Sumatra are the only place in the world where orangutans, elephants, tigers and rhinos all live together - and all are critically endangered.
You may have seen news stories about elephants being poisoned when they have trampled farmers' crops. Human-wildlife conflict is a growing problem, as habitats shrink and are replaced with farmlands. Damaged crops can cause real problems and lost income for small-scale farmers, and one of our projects trains them in how to safely and humanely discourage wildlife from entering farmlands so that fatal conflict can be avoided.
Although there's a risk that elephants will trample young seedlings when they pass through the restoration site, the local people in this corner of the national park are happy to see them. Not only does an elephant sighting reinforce the value of the project - recreating safe habitat for wildlife - the visitors also deposit plenty of organic fertiliser on their way through - in their dung!
Thanks to your generous donations, forest is starting to return, and wildlife along with it. Please share our project with your friends and family, so that we can restore even more forest in Sumatra.
Thank you.
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
