Cottongrass Summer, a new book by the British author Roy Dennis is a breath of fresh air among the mountains of doom and gloom reads about the environment, the climate…
Yohanes Terang, the well-known and respected Dayak poet who took up social and environmental activism long before it became a mainstream concern in West Kalimantan, Indonesia Pak (Mr) Yohanes, as…
Despite decades of hard environmental battle against deforestation, tropical forest losses continue unabated. Forests are cut down to make way for cattle-grazing land, oil palm plantations or other non-forests uses.…
When an Elephant Comes Knocking: A new approach to selective elephant fencing is being tested in Nepal
Ever since the palm oil industry started its industrial-scale expansion in South-East Asia it has been under pressure from environmental activists and NGOs for its negative impacts. Much of that…
It’s 6 in the morning and I am staring out across an open savanna landscape looking at large groups of deer, buffalo, and monkeys. In the distance the outlines of…
Continued from part III. After four days of sailing up the fast-flowing Mahakam we arrive in the village of Laham, not far from the end point of Raven’s trip. In…
Continued from part 2. We have now entered the taller forest parts of the Mahakam area. The river sides are covered in increasingly dense forests and villages are few and…
Continued from part 1. We sail until 10 at night and tie up the boat near the mouth of the Kedang Kepala River in the town of Muara Kaman. This…
Samarinda, East Kalimantan, Indonesia - 13 November 2016. We drive to Samarinda, the riverside capital of East Kalimantan Province in Indonesian Borneo, on a cloudy but warm day. Our boat,…
The third largest orangutan population in West Kalimantan in danger of losing its home, warns Erik Meijaard, an ecologist with the Borneo Futures initiative.
Try to get your head around this one. There is this beautiful natural forest area in West Kalimantan, called Sungai Putri, which roughly translates as the River of the Princess.…
In late 2015, Indonesia featured heavily in the global headlines. Parts of the country were burning so badly that the fires were coined “the greatest environmental disaster of the 21st…
All organizations love media attention, and wildlife conservation groups are no different. Both the positive and negative stories promote conservation work. The more eye-catching the headline and the cuddlier the…
OK, I will keep this short. Plenty has been said about the recent sad event in Indonesian Borneo. For those unaware of the story search the internet for “WWF”, “Kalimantan”, “Meijaard”,…
The shocking image of a burnt orangutan mother and its baby this week really brought it home: All orangutans are Critically Endangered. This used to be the privileged status of…
Forest set alight to clear land for oil palm in Riau's peatlands June 3, 2015. Photos by Rhett Butler. With global sea levels going up at a rate of about…
Male orangutan tranquilized for a health check up in Sumatra. Photo by Rhett A. Butler By and large, Indonesia is a peaceful country. In fact, on the United Nations Office…
Recent deforestation for palm oil production within Aceh's Leuser Ecosystem. Taken in May 2014 by Rhett A. Butler In the run-up to the tenth anniversary of the devastating 2004 tsunami,…
Reforestation project using native tree species in Borneo. Indonesia’s new government has ambitious reforestation plans. President Joko Widodo’s election campaign included a commitment to reforest 2 million hectares of degraded…
All photo by Marc Ancrenaz and Ade Rachmat As our boat sailed towards the forest-clad island, I had no idea what surprise awaited me... A few months ago I was…
Island off West Java. Photo by Rhett Butler Indonesia’s middle and upper classes are becoming increasingly interested and supportive of environmental conservation. Still, they have some way to go to…
New forest clearing for an oil palm plantation in Sumatra. Photo taken in May 2014 by Rhett Butler. How to best use Indonesia’s land resources? This is one of the…
This natural-color satellite image was collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite on Feb. 28, 2014. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined…
Hornbills are killed in Indonesia for the traditional Chinese medicine market. Tropical rainforests are the most species-rich ecosystems in the world. Each square kilometer has hundreds of tree species, birds…
Borneo orangutan. Environmentalists and conservation people, including myself, are a whining lot. It’s our professional affliction to complain about everything that is wrong about the world’s environments and the conservation…
Indonesian rainforest One of the reasons I like living in the tropics is that they are perpetually warm. No more tepid showers in freezing student rooms. No more painfully cold…
Orphaned Orangutan in Central Kalimantan. Photos by Rhett A. Butler. In December 2007, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono launched Indonesia’s Strategy and Action Plan for National Conservation of Orangutans. Quoting the…
Photos by Rhett A. Butler. It is obvious that at the moment Indonesia neither has the political commitment nor ability to safeguard its dwindling populations of orangutans. Despite its Presidentially…
WWF issued a response to this editorial on April 8, 2013 WWF-Indonesia recently caught the attention of the global media with their announcement that the Sumatran rhinoceros still exists in…