SOS – Sumatran Orangutan Society

It's really important to measure the impact of the projects that we support to ensure that they are making a real difference to the fate of orangutans and their forests.

We try to measure the impact of all of the work we fund and support. We work in partnership with a variety of organisations, government agencies and academic experts to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of various approaches to conservation in Sumatra.

It’s easy to count how many orangutans have been rescued and easy to count how many trees have been planted. We are working hard to find more scientific ways of measuring prevented deforestation. We plan to use the latest in satellite monitoring technology to enable more accurate recording of deforestation. This will then be overlaid with areas where we have funded boots on the ground to develop an impact measure for that investment.

Evidence

An evidence-based approach to conservation enables us to ensure that we are using resources wisely. Tracking projects over time helps determine why some strategies are successful and others are not, enabling us to focus on scaling up those that have the greatest potential outcomes for Sumatra’s wildlife, forests and people.

These are some of the questions our evaluation project aims to answer:

What is the impact of reforestation on orangutan populations?
What is the economic impact of protecting rainforest on the human population living in that area?
What is the impact of community education and agroforestry projects on deforestation rates?