Forest Restoration
Our projects concentrate on teaching local communities about the benefits of reforestation and developing alternative livelihoods. We set up organic tree nurseries and forestry centres near degraded forest areas, and provide training so that communities can produce their own seedlings for future replanting.
We have established a number of nursery and replanting sites in Aceh and North Sumatra. Over half a million indigenous tree seedlings have been planted in close collaboration with forest-dependent communities. There projects offer local people a way of supporting their families whilst preserving and restoring the rainforest. We work in the deforested regions around and within the Leuser Ecosystem, the most important remaining habitat for the Sumatran orangutan.
Project close-up: Besitang, North Sumatra
Thanks to our generous supporters around the world, thousands of tree seedlings have now been planted on over 200 hectares of damaged orangutan habitat in Besitang. We have also been training local people to manage organic tree nurseries.
We're seeing some really exciting results - our team has reported evidence of lots of wildlife starting to return to the restored areas of forest - not just orangutans but also siamangs, white-handed gibbons, leopard cats and many endangered and critically endangered bird species too.
Have a look at some of the fantastic pictures from our camera traps!
Thanks to our education and outreach programme, the communities living on the
edge of these critical forests now have a deeper understanding of the
ecological services that rainforests provide, and the ways that these benefit
millions of people every day. This is the first step to fostering conservation
action - and indeed the local people have sprung into action to save their
forests, embracing the restoration work and pledging to protect the park from
further encroachment.
With the Besitang restoration site up and running so successfully, we are now expanding our work to another part of the Leuser forests - Ketambe in the Aceh province of Sumatra.
But there is still much work to be done. Sumatran orangutans are still critically endangered and we must do all that we can to save the forests in which they live.