Blogs

At 9 o'clock yesterday morning, Harapan Rainforest was struck by a strong earthquake, measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale. It followed just hours after another strong quake caused devastation in the city of Padang, about 400km to the northwest, where more than 1,000 lives have already been lost.Fortunately, there has only been minor damage at Harapan Rainforest, and project activities are continuing as normal. However, some Harapan Rainforest staff do have families in Padang and have been given the opportunity to contact their relatives, and travel to Padang if necessary. Hopefully, they will all be safe and well.

The map shows the epicentre of the earthquake as a red star. Harapan Rainforest lies about 200km to the east of the epicentre.

In an earlier post, we mentioned the visit to Harapan Rainforest by Tony Whitten - senior biodiversity specialist at the World Bank. 

As well as his brief clip of a passing sun bear, Tony caught on film the evocative 'great call' of the agile gibbon, which is a duet, with the female accompanied by the male. He also got shots of the family of four swinging their way through the tree canopy with ease. So sit back, turn the volume up, and immerse yourself in the sights and sounds of the rainforest.

For more great shots of the animals found in Harapan Rainforest, check out our campaign video.

An unusually long and hot dry season is currently challenging the Harapan Rainforest team. Logged forest quickly dries out and becomes prone to fire.

Our long-term strategy is to restore the forest as quickly as possible - to re-establish the forest canopy, creating a cool and moist microclimate that is less susceptible to burning. This will take some time, though work has already started, and we are already seeing good regeneration across the site.

What we are doing immediately is to simply keep fire out, and for that we have put together two fire-fighting rapid response teams, with seven members each. They have been trained and fully equipped. This year they have tackled and successfully dealt with more than 50 fires, often on the immediate boundary of the area, where burning is the traditional way to clear land.

Never thought I’d hear myself say it, but let’s hope it starts raining soon!

A shocking report from Sumatra reminds me how important Harapan Rainforest is for tigers. In late August, a female tiger in Jambi zoo (less than three hours from Harapan Rainforest) was killed by poachers. They broke in to the zoo at night, poisoned her, and took her skin and body parts to presumably be sold abroad. Jambi is close to Singapore, and from there it is easy to access the lucrative traditional medicine markets throughout east Asia. Her skin will fetch around £600, a tooth £40, a piece of whisker £8-18 and a rib £15. This is the third such incident in zoos across Indonesia in the last four months.

It reminds us how important Harapan Rainforest is in providing a haven for some of the last of the 300-500 Sumatran tigers in the wild, but also of our challenge in securing that haven against an increasingly ruthless trade in tiger parts (and those from other important wildlife). Of course, the real tragedy is that wildlife body parts are totally ineffective in treating any ailment, and the deaths are always completely in vain.

Harapan Rainforest was recently honoured by a visit from Tony Whitten, a senior biodiversity specialist at the World Bank. Tony was part of a team that produced a World bank paper in 2001 that was influential in prompting RSPB’s involvement in the conservation of Sumatra’s lowland forests when it predicted the imminent loss of the important dry lowland forest. His own engagement with Sumatran wildlife began in the 1970s when he studied the Kloss gibbon on Siberut, an island off the western coast. He has remained a strong advocate for conservation of Sumatra’s amazing wildlife ever since.

While at Harapan Rainforest he was particularly interested in the aquatic life of the small forest streams and the larger Kapas River (he netted the predatory bottom-dwelling frogmouth chaca pictured above). He also got a tantalisingly brief video clip of a sun bear checking out his forest camp. Follow this link http://eapblog.worldbank.org/content/indonesia-hope-for-the-future-and-fish-in-a-sumatran-rainforest to see Tony’s blog of his stay in the forest. His stunning pictures and infectious enthusiasm make for a great read. Thanks, Tony!

Harapan Rainforest staff and local community members celebrated Indonesian Independence Day together on August 17th.

After raising the national flag, singing the national anthem and reading of the declaration of independence, the fun began. Bathin Sembilan children enjoyed a number of games, including an uproarious race to eat krupuk (large prawn crackers) hanging by strings – no hands allowed! No matter who was fastest - everyone was a winner, taking home a Harapan Rainforest rucksack.

Grown-ups (including visitors from the RSPB) tried their luck at retrieving a prize placed tantalisingly at the end of greasy pole suspended over the lake next to camp. Everyone got a dunking of course – but that’s all part of the fun!

I'm just coming to the end of a three-month stint providing management support to the Harapan Rainforest site management team. When I used to work on RSPB reserves in the UK, I'd wake up to the dawn chorus of bird song but here in the forest, the birds are outcompeted by the agile gibbons that are regularly found around camp. Sounding like demented Clangers, the females start calling just before it gets light and usually they are off in the forest feeding before you're able to get a good view. A few days ago, though, I was able to sit and watch three gibbons sitting in one of the trees on the opposite side of the lake, basking in the sunshine, calling occasionally, and with a youngster literally just 'hanging around' obviously enjoying life. Magic!

We're delighted to increase our healthcare capacity at Harapan Rainforest with the appointment of Poppy as our nurse and healthcare worker. With nearly a two-hour round trip to the nearest basic government clinic, and three hours to the nearest hospital, it is important that we are able to at least handle the minor illnesses and injuries of the Harapan Rainforest team here on site. We also need to make sure that disease prevention is a priority, bearing in mind the high incidence of malaria and water-borne disease in the area.
But it’s not just about Harapan Rainforest employees. Poppy will also be giving healthcare advice to the communities in and around the forest, especially those that are most remote from government clinics. Her appointment strengthens our growing healthcare team, with midwife-nurse Pia already based in the village of Sako Suban on Harapan Rainforest’s southern boundary, and interviews underway for the post of project doctor. Welcome Poppy!

Last year the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund helped Harapan Rainforest start a hornbill nestbox scheme. This provides additional nest sites for hornbills while the forest regenerates and more large trees suitable for nesting become available. Lack of nest holes due to loss of large trees is a major threat to hornbills in Sumatra. Over the last year, our tree climbers have mounted 20 boxes at the dizzying heights of 25-30m above the forest floor.
The good news for Harapan Rainforest’s hornbills (all nine of Sumatra's hornbill species are found in the forest) is that we have just secured funds from the Seaworld-Busch Gardens Conservation Fund to continue and expand our nestbox programme for another year. This is a terrific opportunity to develop even more community involvement in this work. We will recruit indigenous forest-dwelling community members to locate active hornbill nest sites in the coming breeding season. This will help us identify exactly what makes a good hornbill nest tree and what we can do to help improve this, either with our nestbox design or, long term, with our forest restoration plans.

It is very important for us to know how Harapan Rainforest is regenerating. To do that we need to know what it is like now. I’ve been running the inventory teams that have just finished the first phase of that work, covering just over half of Harapan Rainforest. It was a marathon effort, with 374 plots measured, taking nearly a year with six teams of eight people involved full-time. In each plot they recorded information on soil type and topography, and measured every tree. When we measure the trees again in a few years time, we should be able to tell how quickly the forest is regenerating. It could also be used to calculate how much carbon is being stored. At the start of the survey, each team could finish one plot a day, but by the end could do two. I hope that they can maintain this level of productivity in the second phase of the inventory, starting shortly.

We are currently celebrating the achievements of Harapan Rainforest’s mobile school. Twenty-one children between seven and 13 from the indigenous Bathin Sembilan community currently attend the school. They learn literacy and numeracy skills, and are introduced to ideas related to nature conservation. The school is popular with the government’s education department, which is currently validating it so that the pupils can leave with recognised qualifications. Though attendance fluctuates as families move within the forest, the school is enormously successful and is a source of pride for all of us at Harapan Rainforest. It offers a real opportunity to improve the livelihoods of indigenous communities who have tended to find themselves on the margins of mainstream society as their nomadic lifestyle makes it difficult for their children to attend conventional schools.

I was thrilled when, whilst walking a regular mammal survey transect line, rustling in some undergrowth turned out to be an adult female Malayan sun bear.

I was even more excited when a few moments later, the bear’s young cub came sliding down a nearby macaranga tree, pausing long enough for me to get some great photos before joining his mother and disappearing into the forest. Formerly widespread across much of Asia, the Malayan sun bear is now becoming very rare because of habit loss and fragmentation. Sun bears are normally solitary animals and so to see two together was a very rare and exciting experience and helps to illustrate the unique nature of Harapan Rainforest and its importance for conserving all types of biodiversity in Indonesia.

Today I was privileged to watch as some of Harapan Rainforest's Bathin Sembilan indigenous community processed the first three tonnes of rattan harvested from Harapan Rainforest. The community is hoping to earn 5-6,000 rupiah (30-40p) per kilo of rattan sold into the commercial market.

Rattan is the stems of a climbing palm and will be familiar to people in the West as the material used in ‘cane’ furniture. I was impressed by their skill in stripping the canes of their vicious thorns and binding them into bundles for transport. Properly done, rattan extraction is far less environmentally damaging than logging. Let's hope the Bathin Sembilan can get a good price at market, and that rattan collection can help towards guaranteeing sustainable livelihoods for them.