Indonesia: Rainforest education in Kalimantan
On this early morning a mist still hangs over the top of the
forest-covered hills on either side of the river. All around us the
forest still thrives, providing sufficient sustenance for both the
huge range of wildlife and the small village communities that have
made this beautiful corner of Kalimantan their home. We are on the way
to teach in one of these villages, Kahingai, and it’s the most
incredible commute to work I could ever imagine, but sad too to think
what this might be like in five years time if the fate of the forest
here follows much of the rest of Kalimantan. Our journey up to
Belantikan from Pangkalan Bun, one month ago, showed us what the
future might hold for the forest here. Passing us on the road heading
back to town were the biggest trees I’ve ever seen, all stacked up two
by two on the trucks that filed past in a long procession.
Further
piles of enormous dead trunks, neatly stripped of all unnecessary
leaves and branches, lay by the side of the road awaiting
transportation. Rampant logging was only part of the problem; most of
the journey out was through oil palm plantations, with the neat ranks
of oil palm advancing into the former territory of the wild forest.
The new plantation is a parody of the original forest, providing no
home to the orangutan or other animals, and when the planters have
finished they leave a land degraded that can never become forest
again. If Borneo was once a Garden of Eden then what has been done to
the trees here makes stealing a bit of fruit look very innocent
indeed. We were fortunate enough on our journey up to Belantikan to
have an unscheduled overnight stop off in a richer part of the jungle
when our van, swerving to avoid a fallen tree, got stuck in the mud.
The accommodation, on the back seat of a van sunken on one side into a
deep muddy ditch, wasn’t the most comfortable, but it was amazing to
wake up with the dawn to a chorus of gibbons in the trees overhead. We
were also lucky enough to see a deer flash across our path to
disappear into the trees on the other side of the road. We were still
in the territory of the logging concession that envelops Belantikan,
but in a relatively untouched part of the forest. A well-policed
logging concession can actually be considered the lesser of three
evils, and there are fears of what might happen to Belantikan when the
concession expires in 2012 if the twin terrors of illegal logging and
palm oil move in en masse. It raises the question, what will be left
when the children we are teaching today have grown up?
http://orangutanfoundation.wildlifedirect.org/2009/01/06/volunteering-in-belantikan-the-morning-commute/
— Posted to http://forestpolicyresearch.com via gmail to posterous and
also to forestpolicyresearch@yahoogroups.com
Posted via email from Deane’s posterous