Samboja Lestari

Samboja Lestari is a private zoo[1] and area of restored tropical rainforest near the city of Balikpapan in East Kalimantan, Borneo, Indonesia, owned by the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS) led by Willie Smits, with the aim of rehabilitating Bornean orangutans. According to Smits, Samboja Lestari uses the principles of People, Planet, Profit, attempting to provide incomes for local people using conservation.[2][3] It is located about 38 kilometres from East Kalimantan's biggest city, Balikpapan.[1]

Yellow-vented bulbul, one of the 137 species of birds now found at Samboja Lestari

The project covers nearly 2,000 hectares (7.7 sq mi) of deforested land. In 2001 BOS began purchasing land near Samboja that, like much of the deforested land in Borneo was covered in alang-alang grass (Imperata cylindrica). The name Samboja Lestari roughly translates as the 'Samboja forever'.[4] Reforestation and orangutan rehabilitation is the core of this project, which is considered controversial because Smits does not allow scientific access to the park, and it is much more expensive to replant a forest instead of just protecting remaining forest.[5] According to BOS by 2006 over 740 different tree species had been planted;[6] by 2009 there were 1200 species of trees, 137 species of birds and nine species of primates.[7]

History of Samboja

The small town of Samboja was founded about a century ago in what was then rainforest when oil was discovered in the area. The first drilling began in 1897 near Balikpapan Bay.[8] Dutch oil workers moved into the area to work for a company that was later taken over by Royal Dutch Shell and later still by the national Indonesian oil company Pertamina. The oil company began cutting wood in the 1950s and as people came flooding into the booming oil town of Balikpapan they cleared the surrounding forest.[9] With the pronounced El Niño of 1982 and 1983 there were fires in the area, destroying the pockets of forest that remained.[10]

According to Smits' 2009 TED talk Samboja in 2002 was the poorest district of East Kalimantan, with 50% of the population unemployed and a high crime rate. Almost a quarter of average income went on buying drinking water. The land was covered with alang-alang grass (Imperata cylindrica). There were many nutrition and hygiene related health problems and life expectancy was low, with high infant and maternal mortality.[2]

The project

In 2001 BOS began purchasing land near Samboja. It insured that the purchase of each plot of land was in accordance with regulations and documented by letter, official seal and security copy.[11]

Conditions were not favourable: aside from the land degradation, the soil itself was not promising - predominantly clay, with hard plinthite clods. Not far beneath the surface there were coal seams that in the dry periods opened up to the air and caught fire. Land prices were rising and there was not enough funding available to buy enough normal rainforest land. Forestry experts are sceptical, once the primary rainforest is cut and burned down, it will take centuries to return.[5][12]

Tree planting

In 2003 BOS bought 1,200 hectares (4.6 sq mi), most of it with credit from the Gibbon Foundation, also run by Smits.

Smits had a tree nursery. Some seeds had been recovered from orangutan faeces.[5] Pioneer trees planted were the drought-resistant sungkai (Peronema canescens) and legumes such as Acacia mangium.[13] Smits drew on his background in microbiology and his doctoral dissertation on mycorrhiza,[14] making enormous quantities of compost for tree seedlings. Along with organic waste, he mixed in sawdust, fruit remnants from the orangutan cages, manure from cattle and chickens scavenged from his other projects in Kalimantan and a microbiological agent made from sugar and cow urine.[5]

Orangutan rehabilitation

Securing the future of the Bornean orangutan was the central concern of the project. Smits' Orangutan Rehabilitation Project at Wanariset was moved to Samboja. "Forest schools" were established, areas that provide natural playgrounds for the orangutans in which to learn forest skills. Here the orangutans roam somewhat freely but under supervision and are returned to sleeping cages for the night. "Orangutan islands" were created where the orangutans and other wildlife that cannot return to the wild are nevertheless able to live in almost completely natural conditions.

Sun bears

At the request of the Indonesian Government, Samboja Lestari became home to 52 sun bears, confiscated from the illegal pet trade or rescued from deforested areas.[1]

The sanctuary includes a 58 hectares (0.22 sq mi) area put aside for the bears including a 55 hectare patch of fenced secondary forest with maturing fruit trees and a river and a second area of approximately 3 hectares,[15] although some of the bears are kept in cages.[1]

Environmental impact

Although there is not yet a return to the biodiversity of the rainforest of Borneo, a secondary forest is growing which it is hoped will eventually become such a rainforest. According to Smits in his 2009 TED talk in addition to bird species such as hornbills, 30 species of reptile, porcupines, pangolins, mouse deer and many other animal species have been recorded. Proboscis monkeys are one of seven primate species to be found at Samboja Lestari. In the same talk Smits claimed there had been a substantial increase in cloud cover and 30% more rainfall due to the reforestation at Samboja Lestari.[2]

Farming

Planted around the perimeter of the rainforest is a belt of sugar palm (Arenga pinnata) trees. This serves both as a protective barrier against fires and as a source of income for local families.[5] Alongside the orangutan reintroduction work BOS promotes farming. Smits believes that to develop the orangutan population, their forest habitat must first be built and for this to be sustainable locals need to be given jobs. The contract to supply food for the orangutans is worth 125 million Indonesian rupiah (about $14,000) a month for 150 farmers.[16]

Finance

To finance the project, BOS uses donors which can symbolically adopt square metres of rainforest.[17] The Samboja Lodge was established to provide accommodation for visitors and volunteers at Samboja. Its design was based upon local architecture and its interior and exterior walls are made of recycled materials.[18]

Praise

Amory Lovins, chief scientist at Colorado's Rocky Mountain Institute claimed Samboja Lestari was possibly "the finest example of ecological and economic restoration in the tropics".[5]

Criticism

Smits has not presented Samboja Lestari for scientific review, no one has independently confirmed his claims of what he has achieved. The costs of the project is enormous, compared to the cost of protecting existing rainforest; for comparison, the Nature Conservancy together with the Indonesian government in partnerships with timber companies have been able to protect vastly more forest and many more orangutans at a fraction of the cost in the same period. Erik Meijaard, conservation scientist and ecologist at the Nature Conservancy who once worked for Smits,[5][16] says that it remains unclear whether Samboja Lestari is a good idea, and that the success will ultimately depend on the extent to which it can improve community livelihoods and achieve long-term financial stability and sustainability: "that question remains unanswered, and will remain so for a few years, because that is the kind of time such projects need to be evaluated". Meijaard also says, like others, that it is better to concentrate on projects that attempt to protect those remaining areas of forest rather than trying to create new ones from scratch.[16]

Smits claims a population of 1000 can be supported instead of the normal 60 orangutans on the land by planting 50 times as much fruit trees such as wild figs per hectare than occurs in a natural forest, this is contentious. The orang-utans in the park are not truly wild, but rely on additional feeding.[16]

See also

Notes
  1. http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/08/02/a-sanctuary-sun-bears.html
  2. February 2009 TED talk, "Willie Smits restores a rainforest". Retrieved 28 March 2010.
  3. Willie Smits' presentation at Qi Global 2009
  4. BOS Australia website
  5. Braxton Little, Jane (7 January 2009). "Regrowing Borneo's Rainforest--Tree by Tree". Scientific American. Retrieved 22 May 2010. Full text
  6. Samboja Lodge website Archived 2011-01-18 at the Wayback Machine
  7. Thompson 2010, p193
  8. Intermediate Cities in the Resource Frontier: A case study of Samarinda and Balikpapan Ph.D dissertation by William Bruce Wood, University of Hawaii, 1985, p63
  9. Schuster 2008, p300
  10. Schuster 2008, p301
  11. Schuster 2008, p304
  12. Schuster 2008, p305
  13. Schuster 2008, p311
  14. Smits WTM, 1994, Dipterocarpaceae: mycorrhizae and regeneration. Thesis. Tropenbos Series No. 9. Backhuys Publishers. Lead.
  15. BOS Sun Bear Sanctuary at www.orangutans.com
  16. Shawn Thompson (17 May 2010). "Borneo experiment shows how saving the apes could save ourselves". This Magazine.
  17. "Create Rainforest website
  18. "About BOS". Retrieved 27 March 2010.

References

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