Save of the Week: Adopt an Acre® program initiated in Asia

This year, The Nature Conservancy is working to protect 50,000 acres of endangered forests in the first ever Adopt an Acre® program initiated in Asia, and to expand our work in Indonesia. Indonesia’s East Kalimantan Province, located on the island of Borneo, holds one of Earth’s most diverse and productive rain forests. Here, among the mist-shrouded trees and sparkling river waters proboscis monkeys, sun bears and clouded leopards reside. It is also here, hidden away within the forest canopy, where one of the last remaining orangutan populations in the world takes refuge.

Specifically, the Adopt an Acre® program is working to protect 50,000 acres in the Kelay watershed area, which provides habitat for approximately 2,500 orangutans — one of the three largest populations remaining in the world. Conservancy research suggests that this population contains three orangutan subspecies with significant physical and genetic differences, including the way that each subspecies uses tools.

This site represents the best hope of survival for the Eastern Borneo orangutan subspecies because it is extensive enough to support a viable population. Orangutans are a critically endangered species, and many scientists believe that at the current rates of habitat loss, orangutans could be extinct in the wild within the next 10 to 20 years.

The upper Kelay watershed is also home to Borneo’s earliest indigenous people, the Punan Dayak. The term Dayak literally means “people of the interior,” and is a collective name for the diverse group of tribal people that originally settled Borneo in the late neolithic period (1800-500 BC). The Punan Dayak have traditionally been forest nomads, totally dependent on the jungle and nearby rivers to supply all of their needs. Even today, the majority of Punan still spend much of the year in the forest, hunting and gathering non-timber forest products.

The Punan philosophy of viewing the forests as a sacred place that nourishes and supports them has been perhaps the only reason that the Kelay watershed has not yet been ravaged by illegal logging. Yet their economy is rapidly changing from one based on barter to cash, and the need to obtain cash for medicine and other goods will increase the chance that they participate in illegal logging in the future.

Uncontrolled logging and clearing are the greatest direct threats to Indonesia’s tropical forests. The country is one of the world’s largest suppliers of timber and with more than two-thirds of this wood illegally harvested, Indonesia’s fragile rain forests are seriously threatened.

This year the funds raised through the Adopt an Acre® Program will help to deploy key strategies to help protect 50,000 acres in the Kelay watershed. These strategies will allow the Conservancy to buy much needed time to halt logging of critical orangutan habitat while the Conservancy negotiates with the Indonesian Government to change the land-use status from production to protection.

For more information:

• How You Can Help: Adopt an Acre®
  Every second of every day, an area the size of a football field is cleared. That's 86,400 football fields per day, seven days a week. By Adopting an Acre® you are providing critical funds for rainforest acquisition and protection enabling the Conservancy and its partners to achieve their mission of protecting biological diversity.
• Places We Protect: East Kalimantan, Indonesia
  Some of the largest and most pristine remaining lowland rain forest on the island of Borneo are located in the Indonesian province of East Kalimantan.
• Online Field Guide: East Kalimantan, Indonesia
  The dense forests of northeastern Borneo, in the province of East Kalimantan, conceal an otherworldly realm.
• Where We Work: The Nature Conservancy in Indonesia
  Since 1991 The Nature Conservancy has worked in partnership with Indonesia’s government and people to protect the country’s irreplaceable natural resources.
• Where We Work: Tropical and Temperate Rainforests
  Wild and wondrous, rainforests extend from as far as Alaska and Canada to Latin America, Asia and Africa. They nurture thousands of rainforest animals and plants found nowhere else on Earth and provide life's essentials such as our medicines, food and water.
• Archive of our Saves of the Week and Success Stories
  Read more about our work to save the last great places on Earth.