Replanting Rainforest in Sumatra, Indonesia

Thanks to your support, we have been training local people in the Besitang region of North Sumatra to manage tree nurseries, growing indigneous seedlings and planting them on damaged areas of land within the Gunung Leuser National Park. Our team have reported evidence of lots of wildlife starting to return to the area - including orangutans, Siamangs, White-handed gibbons, leopard cats, as well as many endangered and critically endangered bird species too. With the restoration site up and running successfully, we are now planning to expand our work to a new part of the Leuser forests - Ketambe in the Aceh province of Sumatra. Whilst carrying out another project in the area, helping the local community to compose conservation action plans for their villages, we discovered that their farmlands had been encroaching on the national park. So we have begun working with the people of Ketambe to help them understand why protecting the forests is important, and they now fully support setting up a restoration site, which they will manage in order to undo the damage. They will also become guardians of this part of the park, ensuring that encroachment doesn't happen in the future. All the communities we work with become part of a network of "conservation villages", and we will continue to support the community in Besitang as well as beginning work in Ketambe.

Thank you, as always, for your support.

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