Kalimantan 2010 Qtr 3

KALIMANTAN, BORNEO
3rd Quarter Report – Year 2010
July – August – September
Wildlife Protection, Habitat Restoration & Community Wellbeing

1. Christmas & New Year appeal to support FNPF’s projects

Please support us by inviting friends and colleagues to donate to FNPF

2. Quartlery Highlights

  • FNPF rescues orphan baby orangutan and relocates to Lamandau Reserve for rehabilitation with foster mother
  • FNPF rescues mother and baby orangutan from palm oil plantation and releases them into saftey of Tanjung Puting National Park (TPNP)
  • Boeing Corporation selects FNPF as it’s first conservation NGO in Asia and donates US$45,000 to FNPF for reforestation in TPNP.
  • Save Indonesian Endangered Species (SIES) selects FNPF to start a new reforestation project in Lamandau Reserve, 40km from TPNP

3. Regular quarterly updates

  • Wildlife Protection
  • Habitat Restoration
  • Community Wellbeing

CHRISTMAS & NEW YEAR APPEAL FOR SUPPORT

Please support us by inviting friends and colleagues to donate to FNPF. You can donate to FNPF directly via our web site here.

Or you can donate via our Australian partner organisation, Humane Society International on their web site here. Please specify “YES” that you are contributing to a specific campaign, and enter “Support for FNPF” as the name of the campaign.

  • $20 will purchase a bag of seeds for our nursery to grow thousands of saplings
  • $25 will fund a child to attend highschool for 1 month
  • $50 will plant 10 saplings and receive 3 years post planting maintenance (water, mulch, protection from fires)
  • $120 will employ 1 local person to work in the nursery or bird centre for 1 month

If you make a donation, please send an email to FNPF informing us of the details and payment method so that we can track the payment and inform you of receipt.

QUARTERLY HIGHLIGHTS

FNPF rescues orphan baby orangutan and relocates to Lamandau Reserve for rehabilitation with foster mother

On 1st August we were contacted by a villager at Sungai Bedaun Village informing us that they have an orangutan baby and asking if FNPF can rear and release it into the wild. There are very strict rulesregulations about orangutans, so we immediately spoke to the government Park Ranger at Tanjung Harapan Base Camp, and the Nature Resource Conservation Body / KSDA officer to determine the best way to save this orangutan. We made it clear that FNPF would be willing to rear the orangutan for the next few year at our project site in TPNP, as we have done successfully with many orangutans previously. After discussions with the various authorities, it was requested that FNPF collect the orangutan and bring it to Nature Resource Conservation Body / KSDA at Kumai.

FNPF’s Borneo manager, Basuki, holding the baby Orangutan

On the 3rd August 5 of our staff and a village member from Tanjung Harapan went to Sungai Bedaun village to inspect and collect the orangutan. The orangutan was with a villager named Leman, who had been given the orangutan about 4 days before by another villager, named Anto, who had found it a month earlier, alone and lethargic, in the palm oil plantation. Anto had taken it it home and cared for it very well but soon realised that it needed speciast care and rehabilitation if it was to have a chance to survive in the wild. The orangutan was a young male about 1 year old and 3 kg in weight. It was still able to climb and build a nest.

We gave some money to compensate Anto and Leman’s expenses (mostly for milk and food) and explained that the money was in appreciation for their good willing in rescuing and caring for the baby orangutan, and for reporting it to us (we do not want villagers to think that they can make money by taking baby orangutans from the wild).

He then took the orangutan to our base camp close to Tanjung Harapan village. We tried to minimise the stress by bringing him away from the village and letting him stay outside most of the time whilst under our staff observation. It remembered how to how find food in the wild, such as ant egg fruit and bud. At night time we put him in a box with bedding material of leafs and twigs. On the 4th we took him to Kumai and gave him to the KSDA officer and he was taken to their rescue and rehabilitation centre at Lamandau Reserve where they hope to find a foster parent for him.

FNPF rescues mother and baby orangutan from palm oil plantation and releases them into saftey of Tanjung Puting National Park (TPNP)

On 25th September we were contacted by a villager at Sungai Bedaun who had seen a female orangutan with baby in the plantation. As usual we contacted the park authority , KSDA and other party who can help us. We advised that the best place for an adult mother orangutan with baby is within the safety of Tanjung Puting National Park. They have a very big chance of surviving if we can safely relocate them. After some discussion with the park authority, KSDA, local NGOs (OFI, OF UK), palm oil plantation management, and local community members, we decided to rescue the orangutan on 27th. We always try to work with the parties to get all to work together in saving the orangutans. After many hours trying to local the mother orangutan and bay, they were caught in the afternoon and reloated to Tanjung Puting National Park. As soon as they were released they moved quickly into the security and saftely of the forest. We are confident that they will survive.

The mother and baby Orangutan on being released into Tanjung Puting National Park

Both of the above orangutan rescue stories demonstrate that our many years of effort to improve the wellbeing of the local communities is being reciprocated by the communties supporting FNPF’s conservation objectives. In both cases the local communtiy members chose to work with FNPF to save the orangutans. Plantation workers now contact FNPF when orangutans are spotted in the palm oil plantations and assist us in their capture and relocation to saftey. Previously, orangutans were killed immediately when spotted in the plantations. This is still the common practice elsewhere.

Thank you for all parties who helped us and especially to Humane Society International Australia for providing a standby fund for these rescues.

Boeing Corporation selects FNPF as it’s first conservation NGO in Asia and donates US$45,000 to FNPF for reforestation in TPNP.

In September 2010, Boeing Corporation selected FNPF over many other NGOs in a competitive grant application. Boeing informed FNPF that this is the first time a conservation NGO has been selected in Asia. Boeing’s funds match those donated by Humane Society International Australia, and will be used to restore 40 Hectares of wetland forest within Tanjung Puting National Park. The planting site is about 10km inside the national park so will create a nursery and temporary accommodation at the project site.

Temporary accommodation being prepared in at the reforestation site

Our staff will spend upto 3 months at a time at the project site working in the nursery, planting and maintaining saplings. The nursery will produce the thousands of saplings that will be planted (minimum of 400 per hectare, totalling 16,000). The saplings are grown from seeds, cuttings and seedlings collected from the nearby native forest.

Nursery at the reforestation site

We look forward to Boeing representatives visiting the project site in April / May 2011, at the end of the rainy season, and hope that they can also visit our project sites at Lamandau Reserve (Kalimantan) and Nusa Penida (Bali). Our goal is to build a long term partnership with Boeing.

FNPF selected to run a new reforestation project in Lamandau Reserve, funded by Australian “Save Indonesian Endangered Species” (SIES)

FNPF was invited by the Indonesian government authority responsible for the Lamadau Reserve Authority to assist them with forest restoration. Other NGOs have been unsuccessful in forest restoration in Lamandau Reserve. The authority was aware of FNPF’s success in Tanjung Puting National Park.

We plan to build wildlife corridors between the patches of remaining, typically each corridor being 100 m to 400 m. We hope by building the corridors, orangutans and other wildlife will be able to move between the forest areas. Plus it will provide a better change for natural regeneration of the native forest. We have had positive discussions with the reserve ranger at their head office in Palangkaraya about how we can work together.

FNPF’s new base camp at Lamandau Reserve

Currently the region is severly degraded and no other reforestation project has yet been successful in this area of the Lamandau Reserve.

FNPF will use the same methodology that has been applied in different parts of TPNP. We will create a Base Camp at the project site, with basic accommodation for our staff, plus a nursery to grow the saplings for planting. Over the next few years we will work to win the participation of the local communities by delivering conservation education combined with community wellbeing projects.

In 2010, FNPF approached SIES for financial assistance and SIES has committed to donate Rp 120,000,000 per year for 2 years (approx US$13,000 per annum) to fund FNPF in this forest restoration project. This only covers about 50% of the required funding so we are seeking donors to assist with this project.

FNPF desperately needs funds for this project. Please contact us if you would like to support FNPF in restoring the forests in Lamandau Reserve, or if you know of an organisation looking for a project for its CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) fund.

Regular Quarterly Updates

Wildlife

Orangutan

Outside of the orangutan rescues from the oil palm plantaions, our day to day involvement is really one of monitoring their presence in the areas in and near to our project. We are pleased that orangutans now regularly visit areas that we only started reforesting in 2005 such as Begurah and Pesalat. This demonstrates that viable orangutan forest can be restored within 5 years.

Turtles

Our turtle hatchery on the south coast region of Tanjung Puting National Park is currently dormant because of lack of funds. For the 2 years that we ran the project, we were able to protect turtle eggs from being stolen (dogs, pigs and fishermen) along 2km of active turtle nesting beach. Local villagers partolled the beach and turtle eggs were collected and placed into our hatchery where we hatched them in safety. The hatchlings were then released into the ocean via a temple ceremony. Involvement of the temple priest helps to communicate the improtance of protecting the turtles to the local community members. The village community is keen to work with us again on this project. But we need funds. The cost to run the project each for the first year is approximately US$9,000, and then US$7,000 for each subsequent year.

Please contact us if you would like to support FNPF in re-activating the turtle hatchery project, or if you know of an organisation looking for a project for its CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) fund.

Habitat Restoration

Forest restoration – Pesalat site

  • we are starting to collect more iron wood seed to produce iron wood sapling
  • we assist the park management to look after conservation camp center at this area
  • planting 5 – 10 saplings per day to increase the number and biodiversity at this area at the same time doing patrolling
  • gave information about our work and the park to the visitor to this area
  • patrolling, especially in case of fires

Special thanks to Humane Society International (Australia) for providing much of the funding for the forest restroation project in Pesalat.

Forest restoration – Beguruh site

  • July monitoring of a 10 Hectares plot revealed that all of the saplings on 4.5 Hectares died due to a flood that lasted over 2 weeks, putting all of the saplings completely underwater. Once the flood water died down, we replaced all of the dead spalings with 1,600 new saplings by trans-locating saplings from an area nearby and our nursery. On the other 5.5 Hectares of the 10 Hectares plot, the survival rate was about 60% after the flood. August monitoring of the same 10 Hectares plot, we record that 70% of them still survived.
  • September monitoring of another 10 Hectares plot, we record 87% survival.
  • The nursery cooperative group Tegari Lestari started to prepare the nursery set for our new 40 Hectare planting project sponsored by Boeing.

Special thanks to Tarongo Zoo for providing much of the funding for the forest restoration work at Beguruh.

Conservation education

We were unable to do the field visit to the park with the primary school at Tanjung Harapan village in July due to the flooding. The village where the school is located was also severly flooded. Instead of having the activity at Tanjung Harapan, we went to Sungai Bedaun village to introduce the conservation education idea to the primary school. We gave a lecture to the primary and junior high schools, and gave simple education about waste management and land restoration, followed by a clean up day around the schooland planting of trees in the school yard. We brought saplings produced by the village cooperative group Sekoyer Lestari and planted 33 of them in and around the school area. This is the first introduction to conservation education at this village and both the student and teacher were very interested.

In Tanjung Harapan village we linked conservation education to the Independence Day celebrations on August 17th. FNPF worked with the primary school to run a painting competition with an environment theme. 43 children participated in the competition, aged from first to sixth grade.

On 30th September we took the primary school from Sekonyer village on a daylong field trip to our planting site at Beguruh. 23 students with 3 teachers participated. We gave theories about conservation to the students, and they participated in a tree planting and monitoring activity, and replaced dead saplings. The students learned how to identify the tree species, how to plant saplings, and tree how to look after the saplings after planting. As usual the kids were happiest when we combined learning with play so we created games with conservation education content. Even though there was so much rain, the children and teachers had a great day.

In July we participated in the international meeting Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation where we had an opportunity to learn about conservation work all over Indonesia. Basuki, our Borneo manager, also received training on designing scientific based conservation.

Community Wellbeing

The floods were as bad as what we experienced in 1998 and some of the fruit trees that we planted previously died. The villagers now understand that the increase in flooding is linked to the loss of the nearby forests.

Two of our staff were chosen to be observers for the village development fund. This means they will have a role in monitoring how the village government spends the funds, and will be able to give suggestions and make corrections. This also increases the visibility of our role in the community development of Tanjung Harapan village.

At the agro-forestry site in Jerumbun, we did some replanting of the rubber and eagle trees that had died and made a development plan for the area. In addition to short and long term crops, we are preparing this area to include an integrated organic agroforestry and livestock area. We nominated which local community members will be selected first to join the program. The project is arranged so that the first person receives a kind of soft loan from FNPF. Then as they repay the loan using the revenue generated from the agro-foresty / organic farming project, we will then reallocate the loan to another village member. In this way, we we will not need to continuously invest more and more money to start each new agro-forsty / organic farming plot.

Special thanks to Global Great Green Fund for providing much of the funding for the agroforestry project in Jerumbun.

We assisted the coopartive Sekoyer Lestari in organising the operation of the nursery with a view to enable more members join the cooperative. We also discussed what saplings they shoudl prepare for the 2011 planting season.

We started to build our cow and chicken pen at Jerumbun as a part of integrated organic agro forestry and livestock program at this area. We assigned two of our staff to take care the program in this area and started to find out where we can source a cow. We also did land preparation for the organic farming. The reforestation cooperative group Sekonyer Lestari started to make the nursery for our next planting program in the Beguruh area, 40ha of swampland. This project is funded by the Boeing Corporation (see above Highlights)


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