JAKARTA — Ripi Yanuar Fajar and his four friends say they’ll never forget that evening after Indonesia’s Independence Day celebration in 2019 when they encountered a big cat roaming a…
GORONTALO, Indonesia — Camera traps have confirmed the presence of babirusa on Indonesia’s Buru Island for the first time in 26 years, the country’s environment ministry announced earlier this month.…
MANOKWARI, Indonesia — High in the northwestern mountains of Indonesia’s West Papua province, the newly established Pegunungan Arfak district has a bold idea: Its leaders hope to achieve economic prosperity…
JAYAPURA, Indonesia — On a sunny afternoon in early August, two tribal chiefs in northern Papua province, at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, met to formalize the system…
TAMBRAUW, Indonesia — It took more than two hours by boat, through a driving rain, to reach the village of Saubeba from the nearest large town of Sausapor in Indonesia’s…
LEMBAH PERMAI, Indonesia — Joula Goni stepped out of her house cradling a skull. “A babirusa,” she explained, placing the bleached white cranium on a formica table on the patio.…
JAYAPURA, Indonesia — When Amos Ondikeleuw became a clan leader, he vowed to never give up his community’s land at the foot of the Cyclops Mountains to the migrants flooding…
TANGKOKO BATUANGUS NATURE RESERVE, Indonesia — For 55-year-old Nestor Mirontoneng, the years he has spent guiding visitors as they trek this sloping landscape on Sulawesi island have brought him a…
One night in June 2013, the rev of a car engine caught the ear of Markus Ilun, an indigenous leader in the remote Indonesian village of Punan Adiu. He was…
One March morning on the island of Sulawesi, not long after Yerri Otoluwa was appointed acting head of Rumbia village, two men she didn’t know arrived on her doorstep. “Can…
