The Rimba Raya Conservation (RRC) team has worked closely with local villages to develop a programme that helps provide employment and income from tree planting. Many villagers want the area to become forest again to improve fish stocks, to curb fires and to limit the impacts of droughts and floods. Getting back to nature makes sense financially and culturally, they say.
Rimba Raya is planting more than 20 species of native trees over hundreds of hectares and the initial plan is to plant at least 500,000, with more than 200,000 planted since the programme began in 2015. All are grown locally, with Rimba Raya buying them from village nurseries.
Nasrul Ichsan, 40, who manages Rimba Raya’s programmes in the project’s central region, explains the goals of the tree-planting project:
“This part of the Rimba Raya concession area is hit by fires every year. We are doing our best to return this area closer to its original form by planting some native species which originally grew here. We are continuously trying to make sure what we are planting will survive,” he said during a recent interview at the planting area.
He explained that the survival rate is 89 percent for the saplings, which are planted every five metres in a grid pattern.
“This programme is basically a cooperation between local Dayak people and RRC. We are pushing them to always be independent, and this is actually one alternative source of income for the people.“
Rimba Raya provides technical support, teaching people how to produce high-quality seedlings. We give them capital to produce seedlings, and then teach them how to plant trees and take care of them. The next stage is to make sure people can be independent in restoring damaged land, burnt land. To make it productive again or return it to its condition as a natural, forested area.