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		<title>Conservation news</title>
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		<link>https://news.mongabay.com/list/west-sumatra/</link>
		<description>Environmental science and conservation news</description>
		<lastBuildDate>Fri, 14 Aug 2026 14:31:04 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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	<title>West Sumatra environmental news</title>
	<link>https://news.mongabay.com/list/west-sumatra/</link>
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				<item>
					<title>Crackdown on snares in Sumatra as elephant, sun bear and tiger rescued</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/crackdown-on-snares-in-sumatra-as-elephant-sun-bear-and-tiger-rescued/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/crackdown-on-snares-in-sumatra-as-elephant-sun-bear-and-tiger-rescued/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>25 Jun 2026 13:00:11 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Jaka Hendra BaittriVinolia]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Mongabay Editor]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/06/25125105/Sumatran-tiger-snare-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=321801</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Conservation, Crime, Endangered Species, Environment, Environmental Law, Illegal Trade, Law, Law Enforcement, Poaching, Snares, Wildlife, Wildlife Rescues, Wildlife Trade, and Wildlife Trafficking]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[PADANG, Indonesia — Authorities in a stronghold for Sumatran tigers have warned the public against using snares to trap wild boar following the dramatic rescue of an 11-month old female tiger cub last month. While it is not illegal to set a snare for the purpose of trapping wild boar or animals that are not [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[PADANG, Indonesia — Authorities in a stronghold for Sumatran tigers have warned the public against using snares to trap wild boar following the dramatic rescue of an 11-month old female tiger cub last month. While it is not illegal to set a snare for the purpose of trapping wild boar or animals that are not protected by law, the West Sumatra government said any protected species caught in a snare will now lead to criminal liability. The new clarification was set out in a letter issued in late May by the West Sumatra province office of Indonesia’s conservation agency, the BKSDA. It cites a 2024 amendment to Indonesia’s 1990 conservation law governing the protection of wildlife. “The situation has become dangerous because people are setting these snares,” explained Rizaldi, a conservation scientist at Andalas University in Padang, the capital of West Sumatra province. The evacuation of a Sumatran tiger trapped in a wild boar snare in Pasaman. Image courtesy of BKSDA West Sumatra. Renewed attention on snares The recent crackdown on snares was sparked after a Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) was discovered in a wild boar snare in Padang Mantiggi Utara village located in West Sumatra’s Pasaman district. Officials from the West Sumatra BKSDA, the conservation agency, arrived at the scene at around 13:30 on May 21, where they found a young female tiger in distress and pain. A snare was wrapped around the animal’s neck, trunk and right foreleg, in about five loops. “She struggled for a while&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/crackdown-on-snares-in-sumatra-as-elephant-sun-bear-and-tiger-rescued/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
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										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/crackdown-on-snares-in-sumatra-as-elephant-sun-bear-and-tiger-rescued/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-321801</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Survivors sue Indonesian government over response to catastrophic Sumatra floods</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/survivors-sue-indonesian-government-over-response-to-catastrophic-sumatra-floods/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/survivors-sue-indonesian-government-over-response-to-catastrophic-sumatra-floods/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>02 Jun 2026 09:28:56 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Hans Nicholas Jong]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Hans Nicholas Jong]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/15024510/AP25336127205797-Batang_Toru-Sumatra-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=320475</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Aceh, Asia, Indonesia, North Sumatra, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Corporate Environmental Transgressors, Corporations, Deforestation, Disasters, Drivers Of Deforestation, Environmental Law, Flooding, Law, Law Enforcement, Rainforests, and Tropical Deforestation]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — A group of Indonesian citizens affected by the late-2025 Sumatra floods and landslides have filed a lawsuit with a court in Jakarta in an effort to hold the Indonesian government accountable for what they describe as an “ecological disaster.” The disasters claimed more than 1,200 lives and damaged more than 600,000 buildings across [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — A group of Indonesian citizens affected by the late-2025 Sumatra floods and landslides have filed a lawsuit with a court in Jakarta in an effort to hold the Indonesian government accountable for what they describe as an “ecological disaster.” The disasters claimed more than 1,200 lives and damaged more than 600,000 buildings across three provinces, resulting in more than 100 trillion rupiah ($5.6 billion) in estimated economic losses. The plaintiffs argue the damage from Cyclone Senyar was amplified by decades of policy failures, including deforestation, extractive concessions, degraded watersheds, weak zoning, poor environmental enforcement and the absence of an effective early-warning system. Through the lawsuit, the plaintiffs are effectively asking the court to determine whether the catastrophe transcended a natural calamity and could be categorized as a foreseeable failure of governance linked to environmental degradation and state inaction. The lawsuit combines elements of Indonesia’s citizen lawsuit mechanism with a challenge to alleged unlawful government administrative inaction under a 2014 law on public services. Alfi Syukri, a lawyer with the West Sumatra chapter of the Legal Aid Institute (LBH), who is representing the plaintiffs, noted that Indonesia’s meteorological agency, the BMKG, had repeatedly warned authorities about the potential for extreme weather linked to Cyclone Senyar before the disaster intensified. “So in Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra [provinces], the head of BMKG Region 1 had already issued warnings eight days before [the Nov. 25 landfall], then repeated them four days before, and again two days before,” BMKG chief Teuku&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/survivors-sue-indonesian-government-over-response-to-catastrophic-sumatra-floods/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/survivors-sue-indonesian-government-over-response-to-catastrophic-sumatra-floods/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-320475</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Nine killed at illegal mine in latest Sumatra landslide tragedy as gold surge continues</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/nine-killed-at-illegal-mine-in-latest-sumatra-landslide-tragedy-as-gold-surge-continues/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/nine-killed-at-illegal-mine-in-latest-sumatra-landslide-tragedy-as-gold-surge-continues/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>21 May 2026 18:22:19 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Novia Harlina]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Mongabay Editor]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/05/21092147/gold-mining-west-sumatra-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=319886</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Disasters, Environment, Environmental Law, Gold Mining, Illegal Mining, and Mining]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[PADANG, Indonesia — Nine people were killed on May 14 in Indonesia’s West Sumatra province after heavy rain triggered the collapse of a 30-meter (100-foot) cliff at an illegal gold mine. “Three people survived, while nine others who were buried have been recovered deceased,” said Susmelawati Rosya, a spokesperson for the West Sumatra province police. [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[PADANG, Indonesia — Nine people were killed on May 14 in Indonesia’s West Sumatra province after heavy rain triggered the collapse of a 30-meter (100-foot) cliff at an illegal gold mine. “Three people survived, while nine others who were buried have been recovered deceased,” said Susmelawati Rosya, a spokesperson for the West Sumatra province police. Local officials said miners had ignored repeated warnings to stop work amid sustained torrential rain, and that the high international price of gold continued to draw people into the risky work. “They were reminded, but they continued with their activities,” said Zainal, the head of Guguk village, an ethnic Minangkabau village where the disaster occurred. On May 13, floodwaters swept away dozens of pontoons used by illegal gold miners near the confluence of three rivers, the Batang Sinamar, Batang Ombilin and Batang Kuantan. A day later, the heavy rain culminated in the fatal landslip at the mining site in Guguk village. Authorities say illegal mining on the rivers has become widespread in recent years. The local karst landscape is around 350 million years old and is being proposed as a global geopark to UNESCO, the United Nations’ science and cultural agency. A row of pontoons used by miners in the proposed Silokek geopark before they were washed away by heavy rain in May, 2026. Image by Novia Harlina/Mongabay Indonesia. Illegal gold mining accidents have repeatedly turned deadly in West Sumatra — and other areas of Sumatra — over the past decade, including landslides and tunnel&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/nine-killed-at-illegal-mine-in-latest-sumatra-landslide-tragedy-as-gold-surge-continues/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/nine-killed-at-illegal-mine-in-latest-sumatra-landslide-tragedy-as-gold-surge-continues/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-319886</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Sumatra officials stress environment checks continue in wake of deadly cyclone</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/sumatra-officials-stress-environment-checks-continue-in-wake-of-deadly-cyclone/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/sumatra-officials-stress-environment-checks-continue-in-wake-of-deadly-cyclone/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>10 Mar 2026 14:15:27 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Jaka Hendra Baittri]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Mongabay Editor]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/19081613/Nelayan-Pantai-Patenggangan-Kota-Padang-yang-terdampak-secara-ekonomi-karena-galodoh-dari-Hulu_Foto-Jaka-HB_P1200196-1536x1024-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=315507</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Climate Change, Conservation, Disasters, Environment, Flooding, Governance, Industry, Mining, Storms, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[PADANG, Indonesia — Environmental inspectors in Indonesia say they’re continuing to monitor compliance by mining and other companies on the island of Sumatra amid ongoing public outcry three months after Cyclone Senyar struck the island, killing more than 1,000 people. Tasliatul Fuadi, the head of the environmental department in West Sumatra province, pointed to recent [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[PADANG, Indonesia — Environmental inspectors in Indonesia say they’re continuing to monitor compliance by mining and other companies on the island of Sumatra amid ongoing public outcry three months after Cyclone Senyar struck the island, killing more than 1,000 people. Tasliatul Fuadi, the head of the environmental department in West Sumatra province, pointed to recent spot inspections on the slopes of Mount Sariak, a short distance from the provincial capital, Padang, as well as new signage displaying public information to report allegations of misconduct. “Should there be any further suspected cases of violations, please make an official report,” Tasliatul said. At least 267 people were killed in West Sumatra late last year — with 70 people still missing at the time of writing — after Cyclone Senyar made landfall over the north of Sumatra Island on Nov. 26 and 27. The Sariak area is located on the outskirts of Padang, where 11 people were killed following the cyclone. At least 197 people were killed in the district of Agam, several hours west of the city. Conducting comprehensive field checks on land-use change and environmental compliance in West Sumatra requires traveling long distances on a poor road network through a mountainous province larger than Switzerland. Many areas take at least a day to reach. The flash floods unleashed by the cyclone, for many the worst in memory, also killed hundreds in the neighboring provinces of North Sumatra and Aceh, the latter a semiautonomous region and Indonesia’s westernmost point. In the aftermath,&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/sumatra-officials-stress-environment-checks-continue-in-wake-of-deadly-cyclone/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/sumatra-officials-stress-environment-checks-continue-in-wake-of-deadly-cyclone/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-315507</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Sumatra province plan to permit ‘community’ mines alarms civil society</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/sumatra-province-plan-to-permit-community-mines-alarms-civil-society/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/sumatra-province-plan-to-permit-community-mines-alarms-civil-society/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>20 Feb 2026 07:41:01 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Jaka Hendra Baittri]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Mongabay Editor]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/02/19092049/Mesin-Penamabang-EMas-Tanpa-Izin-di-Geopark-Silokek-Kabupaten-Sijunjung-Sumatera-Barat_P1167038-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=314468</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Conservation, Deforestation, Drivers Of Deforestation, Environment, Environmental Law, Gold Mining, Governance, Illegal Mining, Mining, Politics, Tropical Deforestation, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[PADANG, Indonesia — The government of West Sumatra plans to move forward with a legal pathway for up to 300 small mines operating illegally in the heavily forested province, joining several other devolved governments grappling with how to treat the vast number of unlicensed mines operating across Indonesia. “Environmental damage brings long-term problems, therefore we [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[PADANG, Indonesia — The government of West Sumatra plans to move forward with a legal pathway for up to 300 small mines operating illegally in the heavily forested province, joining several other devolved governments grappling with how to treat the vast number of unlicensed mines operating across Indonesia. “Environmental damage brings long-term problems, therefore we can’t stay silent,” West Sumatra Governor Mahyeldi Ansarullah said in a statement. If approved by Indonesia’s mining and energy ministry, West Sumatra could add substantially to the total number of “community mining zones” already created by the government to date. A crucial distinction is that this deregulation initiative is expanding on paper but remains incipient in practice. By 2024, Indonesia had agreed to 1,215 of these Wilayah Pertambangan Rakyat mining zones in 19 of the country’s 38 provinces, with the zones applying to extraction of commodities like gold and sand. Crucially, however, the government has so far awarded only a handful of the practical permits that actually allow a mine to operate. The development in West Sumatra takes place amid a nationwide crackdown by a military-led forestry task force, which has seized millions of hectares of unlicensed forest operations, shifting its focus from plantations in 2025 to mining in 2026. The government of West Sumatra in 2025 issued calls for a crackdown on illegal mining, but a change in tactics is now underway, recent statements by Mahyeldi indicate. “Regulations must be followed,” the governor added. “But we also have to prepare solutions in order for&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/sumatra-province-plan-to-permit-community-mines-alarms-civil-society/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/sumatra-province-plan-to-permit-community-mines-alarms-civil-society/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-314468</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Indonesia faces scrutiny over permit revocations following deadly floods and landslides</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/indonesia-faces-scrutiny-over-permit-revocations-following-deadly-floods-and-landslides/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/indonesia-faces-scrutiny-over-permit-revocations-following-deadly-floods-and-landslides/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>20 Feb 2026 03:55:53 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Hans Nicholas Jong]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Hans Nicholas Jong]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/18164313/Permukiman-hancur-akibat-banjir6-2048x1366-2-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=314513</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Aceh, Asia, Indonesia, North Sumatra, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Corporate Environmental Transgressors, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporations, Deforestation, Disasters, Environment, Environmental Law, Law, Law Enforcement, Palm Oil, Plantations, Rainforests, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — The Indonesian government’s revocation of 28 forestry, plantation and mining permits after the deadly Sumatra floods is facing new scrutiny after researchers found that several of the concessions cited in the announcement had already expired, been revoked years earlier or are located outside the disaster-hit watersheds. The revocations, announced after Cyclone Senyar triggered [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — The Indonesian government’s revocation of 28 forestry, plantation and mining permits after the deadly Sumatra floods is facing new scrutiny after researchers found that several of the concessions cited in the announcement had already expired, been revoked years earlier or are located outside the disaster-hit watersheds. The revocations, announced after Cyclone Senyar triggered landslides and flash floods that killed about 1,200 people, mark a shift in enforcement. Instead of focusing on court-led environmental cases and restoration orders, officials say the land will be managed by state-owned enterprises under the sovereign wealth fund Danantara. Civil society groups say that risks turning a disaster response into a restructuring of control over forest and resource assets. Officials have said the 28 companies violated environmental and forestry regulations through their activities such as forest clearing and thus contributed to ecological damage linked to the disasters. However, an analysis by the NGO Auriga Nusantara found that some of the permits cited in the announcement had already been revoked years earlier, while others had expired before the floods occurred. The discrepancies add to growing confusion over how the policy is being implemented, which companies are actually linked to the November 2025 floods and landslides and what will happen to the former concession areas now slated for transfer to state-owned enterprises under Danantara. “We found that several companies’ concessions are not located in the disaster-affected areas — they are quite far from the disaster zones,” Auriga legal director Roni Saputra told Mongabay. A woman stands&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/indonesia-faces-scrutiny-over-permit-revocations-following-deadly-floods-and-landslides/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-314513</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Indonesia revokes forest and mine permits over role in deadly Sumatra landslides</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/indonesia-revokes-forest-and-mine-permits-over-role-in-deadly-sumatra-landslides/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/indonesia-revokes-forest-and-mine-permits-over-role-in-deadly-sumatra-landslides/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>22 Jan 2026 01:38:30 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Hans Nicholas Jong]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Hans Nicholas Jong]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/09070406/man-with-chicken-Batang-Toru-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=313214</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Aceh, Asia, Indonesia, North Sumatra, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Apes, Biodiversity, Corporate Environmental Transgressors, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporations, Critically Endangered Species, Deforestation, Drivers Of Deforestation, Energy, Environment, Environmental Law, Forestry, Forests, Gold Mining, Great Apes, Hydroelectric Power, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Law, Law Enforcement, Mining, Orangutans, Plantations, Pulp And Paper, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforests, Threats To Rainforests, Tropical Deforestation, Tropical Forests, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has revoked the permits of 28 companies over environmental violations that authorities say exacerbated the deadly floods and landslides that struck the island of Sumatra in late 2025. The revocations follow an audit carried out by a government task force responsible for forest area enforcement after disasters triggered by Cyclone [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has revoked the permits of 28 companies over environmental violations that authorities say exacerbated the deadly floods and landslides that struck the island of Sumatra in late 2025. The revocations follow an audit carried out by a government task force responsible for forest area enforcement after disasters triggered by Cyclone Senyar in November 2025, which killed about 1,200 people across Indonesia’s main western island. The audit found that the 28 companies had violated various rules, including the 2009 law on environmental protection, and bore responsibility for environmental damage linked to the disasters. Authorities still haven’t disclose detailed findings or evidence for each case. The audit results were presented to President Prabowo Subianto during an online meeting on Jan. 19. “Based on that report, the president decided to revoke the permits of 28 companies that were proven to have committed violations,” State Secretariat Minister Prasetyo Hadi said at a press conference on Jan. 20, as quoted by CNBC Indonesia. The move signals a shift in how administrative enforcement is framed in Indonesia, with permit sanctions now explicitly justified by post-disaster accountability rather than routine compliance alone. The revoked permits include 22 forest utilization permits (PBPH) for operating in natural and plantation forests, covering a combined area of about 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) — roughly one-third the size of Belgium — as well as six mining, plantation and timber forest product utilization permits (PBPHHK). Among the affected permit holders is major pulpwood producer PT Toba&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/indonesia-revokes-forest-and-mine-permits-over-role-in-deadly-sumatra-landslides/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/indonesia-revokes-forest-and-mine-permits-over-role-in-deadly-sumatra-landslides/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-313214</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Indonesia launches sweeping environmental audits after Sumatra flood disaster</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/indonesia-launches-sweeping-environmental-audits-after-sumatra-flood-disaster/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/indonesia-launches-sweeping-environmental-audits-after-sumatra-flood-disaster/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>07 Jan 2026 10:50:10 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Hans Nicholas Jong]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Hans Nicholas Jong]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/18164313/Permukiman-hancur-akibat-banjir6-2048x1366-2-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=312684</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Aceh, Asia, Indonesia, North Sumatra, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Climate Change, Corporate Environmental Transgressors, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporations, Disasters, Ecosystems, Environment, Environmental Law, Forests, Landscape Restoration, Law, Law Enforcement, Mining, Planetary Health, Rainforests, Rehabilitation, Restoration, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has announced what it describes as a sweeping, science-based effort to reassess environmental governance, zoning and corporate accountability in the wake of floods and landslides that killed more than 1,100 people across the island of Sumatra. The disasters were triggered by extreme rainfall linked to Tropical Cyclone Senyar, but government [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has announced what it describes as a sweeping, science-based effort to reassess environmental governance, zoning and corporate accountability in the wake of floods and landslides that killed more than 1,100 people across the island of Sumatra. The disasters were triggered by extreme rainfall linked to Tropical Cyclone Senyar, but government officials, scientists and environmental researchers say the scale of the destruction can’t be attributed to the weather alone. They point instead to long-term land-use changes — including deforestation and large-scale forest conversion — that have weakened natural buffers in Sumatra’s upland watersheds, leaving landscapes unable to absorb intense rainfall. The government has acknowledged that human-driven changes to land cover have fundamentally altered Sumatra’s landscapes, reducing their capacity to prevent severe flooding and landslides when extreme weather hits. “These changes are caused both by anthropogenic factors — such as the conversion of forest cover into non-forest areas — and by heavy rainfall, combined with the geomorphological characteristics of our soils, which are unable to adapt to these pressures,” Environment Minister Hanif Faisol Nurofiq said. The acknowledgment marks a significant shift in tone. Rather than treating the disasters solely as natural events, the government is now explicitly linking loss of life and environmental damage to development decisions, land-use planning and corporate activity — and signaling that permits and licenses may no longer shield companies from accountability. On Dec. 23, 2025, Hanif announced a three-pronged intervention covering Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra, the provinces most severely affected&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/indonesia-launches-sweeping-environmental-audits-after-sumatra-flood-disaster/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/indonesia-launches-sweeping-environmental-audits-after-sumatra-flood-disaster/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-312684</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>A flood of logs post-Cyclone Senyar leaves Padang fishers out of work</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/a-flood-of-logs-post-cyclone-senyar-leaves-padang-fishers-out-of-work/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/a-flood-of-logs-post-cyclone-senyar-leaves-padang-fishers-out-of-work/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>20 Dec 2025 05:07:10 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Jaka Hendra Baittri]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Philip Jacobson]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/19081807/Banjir-Sumbar-Jaka-2048x890-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=311700</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Indonesian Fisheries and Indonesian Forests]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, Tropics, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Climate Change, Climate Justice, Coastal Ecosystems, Conservation, Deforestation, Disasters, Environment, Fish, Fisheries, Fishing, Flooding, Forestry, Forests, Global Environmental Crisis, Impact Of Climate Change, Oceans, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforests, Sea Levels, Tropical Deforestation, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[PADANG, Indonesia — At low tide along Padang&#8217;s coastline, fishing boats sit idle, not because of rough seas, but because the water is clogged with timber. In late November, flash floods from Cyclone Senyar swept through parts of Sumatra, killing residents and damaging roads and homes. Days later, their aftermath surfaced offshore. Logs carried from [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[PADANG, Indonesia — At low tide along Padang&#8217;s coastline, fishing boats sit idle, not because of rough seas, but because the water is clogged with timber. In late November, flash floods from Cyclone Senyar swept through parts of Sumatra, killing residents and damaging roads and homes. Days later, their aftermath surfaced offshore. Logs carried from upstream forests poured out of river mouths and spread along the coast here in Padang, the capital of Indonesia&#8217;s West Sumatra province, blocking access to the sea and cutting off the livelihoods of hundreds of fishers. The mass of floating wood has made it impossible for fishers to pass, with some intact logs measuring up to 90 centimeters (35 inches or nearly 3 feet) in diameter. “For the past two days, the logs have been piling up. If we try to go out, the boats could be damaged,” Syafri Juni, a fisher from Patenggangan Beach in Padang, told Mongabay on Dec. 10. Residents look on at piles of logs from the flash floods at Patenggangan Beach, Padang, on Nov. 28. Image by Jaka Hendra Baittri/Mongabay-Indonesia. The formation of a hurricane in the Malacca Strait was an extremely rare occurrence, scientists say, and a devastating one — the storm killed more than 1,000 people across Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Sri Lanka. On the island of Sumatra, torrential rains hit a landscape whose capacity to soak up rainfall has been compromised by decades of rainforest clearance. Syafri had not gone to sea for the past week because&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/a-flood-of-logs-post-cyclone-senyar-leaves-padang-fishers-out-of-work/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/a-flood-of-logs-post-cyclone-senyar-leaves-padang-fishers-out-of-work/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-311700</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Sumatra’s ‘natural’ disaster wasn’t natural: How deforestation turned a rare cyclone catastrophic</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/sumatras-natural-disaster-wasnt-natural-how-deforestation-turned-a-rare-cyclone-catastrophic/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/sumatras-natural-disaster-wasnt-natural-how-deforestation-turned-a-rare-cyclone-catastrophic/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>15 Dec 2025 03:02:14 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rhett Ayers Butler]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/12/15024510/AP25336127205797-Batang_Toru-Sumatra-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=311299</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Aceh, Asia, Indonesia, North Sumatra, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Analysis, Deforestation, Disasters, Environment, Flooding, Forests, Plantations, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforests, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Indonesia’s government has been at pains to stress that the recent catastrophe in Sumatra was triggered by a rare meteorological event. Cyclone Senyar formed in the Malacca Strait, an area where the national weather agency notes such storms are “an extremely rare phenomenon,” before unloading torrents of rain on Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra. [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Indonesia’s government has been at pains to stress that the recent catastrophe in Sumatra was triggered by a rare meteorological event. Cyclone Senyar formed in the Malacca Strait, an area where the national weather agency notes such storms are “an extremely rare phenomenon,” before unloading torrents of rain on Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra. Meteorologists say the interaction of two cyclones may have produced record rainfall over parts of the island. Scientists are cautious about pinning any single storm on climate change. Yet few now argue that the tragedy was simply an act of nature. Men stand on logs swept away by flash flood in Batang Toru, North Sumatra, Indonesia, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025. Photo credit: AP Photo/Binsar Bakkara Officials themselves have begun to say the quiet part out loud. Forestry minister Raja Juli Antoni told parliament that “poor forest management” had worsened the disaster, and promised to “review forest governance, consider a moratorium on new permits, and revoke the licenses of violators,” according to Reuters. The environment minister, Hanif Faisol Nurofiq, has suspended permits for several companies in the Batang Toru watershed and warned that criminal proceedings are possible if violations are found. The broader pattern is well documented: Sumatra has lost an estimated 4.4 million hectares of forest since 2001. When the floodwaters receded, viral images showed how extensive clearing shapes disaster impacts on the ground: houses smashed by logs, riverbanks lined with cut timber, and whole slopes stripped to bare soil. Annual primary forest loss in&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/sumatras-natural-disaster-wasnt-natural-how-deforestation-turned-a-rare-cyclone-catastrophic/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/sumatras-natural-disaster-wasnt-natural-how-deforestation-turned-a-rare-cyclone-catastrophic/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-311299</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Indigenous conservationists lead the fight to save Mentawai’s endangered primates</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/05/indigenous-conservationists-lead-the-fight-to-save-mentawais-endangered-primates/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/05/indigenous-conservationists-lead-the-fight-to-save-mentawais-endangered-primates/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>15 May 2025 21:18:12 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Ana Norman Bermúdez]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Isabel Esterman]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/05/14120519/13-Dami-Tateburuk-Frengky-Sabbattilat-Ismael-Saumanuk-and-Vincent-Tateburuk-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=299044</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Community Forests, Community-based Conservation, Conservation, Culture, Environment, Forests, Hunting, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Rights, Primates, Sustainable Forest Management, Traditional Knowledge, Traditional People, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[SOUTH SIBERUT, Indonesia — As night falls over the Siberut jungle, a fire crackles inside the Tateburuk clan’s wooden home, or uma. The walls are covered in traditional Mentawai carvings of forest creatures — birds, lizards, monkeys and gibbons — a reminder that the boundary between the outside world and the home is thin. Damianus [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[SOUTH SIBERUT, Indonesia — As night falls over the Siberut jungle, a fire crackles inside the Tateburuk clan’s wooden home, or uma. The walls are covered in traditional Mentawai carvings of forest creatures — birds, lizards, monkeys and gibbons — a reminder that the boundary between the outside world and the home is thin. Damianus Tateburuk, 43, known to everyone as Dami, glances up at the dozens of primate skulls hanging from the doorframe. “They are offerings,”  he says. “They cleanse the uma of bad spirits.” The Mentawai people, Indigenous to the Mentawai Islands off the west coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island, are hunters, and the islands’ endemic primates have long been important targets. Five of the six primate species found in the Mentawai Islands are traditionally hunted: the simakobu (pig-tailed langur, Simias concolor), joja pagai (Mentawai langur, Presbytis potenziani), joja siberut (Siberut langur, Presbytis siberu), bokkoi pagai (Pagai Island macaque, Macaca pagensis) and bokkoi siberut (Siberut macaque, Macaca siberu). The only primate traditionally spared is the bilou (Kloss’s gibbon, Hylobates klossii). “Hunting bilou is forbidden,” Dami says, explaining the role of the bilou as a spiritual messenger in Mentawai belief. “Its songs warn us of bad omens, disasters, and even deaths.” Growing up, Dami was a prolific hunter. But over time, he noticed that the islands’ primates were becoming harder to find. In 2013, along with his friends Ismael Saumanuk, Vincent Tateburuk and Mattheus Sakaliou,  he founded the grassroots organization . Named for an ancestor who Dami says initiated&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/05/indigenous-conservationists-lead-the-fight-to-save-mentawais-endangered-primates/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/05/indigenous-conservationists-lead-the-fight-to-save-mentawais-endangered-primates/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-299044</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Snared, skinned, sold: Brutal March for Indonesia’s Sumatran tigers</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/04/snared-skinned-sold-brutal-march-for-indonesias-sumatran-tigers/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/04/snared-skinned-sold-brutal-march-for-indonesias-sumatran-tigers/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>10 Apr 2025 05:02:57 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Junaidi HanafiahRahmi CarolinaVinolia]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Philip Jacobson]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/04/09085354/animals_209019-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=297230</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Big Cats, Biodiversity, Cats, Conservation, Crime, Critically Endangered Species, Environment, Habitat Loss, Mammals, Poaching, Predators, Snares, Tigers, Top Predators, Wildlife, Wildlife Trade, and Wildlife Trafficking]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[ROKAN HULU/PADANG/CENTRAL ACEH, Indonesia — In separate incidents in early March, officials across three Indonesian provinces rescued a critically endangered Sumatran tiger with its leg amputated, arrested six people for butchering another of the big cats, and detained five suspects in rural Aceh allegedly selling tiger body parts. The spate of arrests began on March [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[ROKAN HULU/PADANG/CENTRAL ACEH, Indonesia — In separate incidents in early March, officials across three Indonesian provinces rescued a critically endangered Sumatran tiger with its leg amputated, arrested six people for butchering another of the big cats, and detained five suspects in rural Aceh allegedly selling tiger body parts. The spate of arrests began on March 2 in the highlands of Sumatra’s Riau province, after conservation agency officials received a report of a Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) caught in a snare trap in Tibawan village, Rokan Hulu district. The officials, based in Pekanbaru, the provincial capital, asked local leaders, including the police, to secure the location as they made the eight-hour drive to Tibawan. When they arrived the next morning, however, they found an empty snare and signs someone had used a machete to beat a path through the forest. Blood spots and car tire tracks were nearby. The subsequent investigation focused on a group of men believed to have approached the location at around 10 p.m., about one hour before the officials departed from Pekanbaru. Inquiries led investigators to a black minivan seen at a car wash in Ujung Batu, the largest town in Rokan Hulu district. Police pulled it over and detained its three occupants. “The back of that car was full of animal feces,” one officer told Mongabay Indonesia. Officers arrested two more people, around 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the trap, who had allegedly skinned and chopped up the tiger, storing the body parts in plastic&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/04/snared-skinned-sold-brutal-march-for-indonesias-sumatran-tigers/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/04/snared-skinned-sold-brutal-march-for-indonesias-sumatran-tigers/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-297230</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Tragedy haunts community on shore of Sumatra’s largest solar farm</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/03/tragedy-haunts-community-on-shore-of-sumatras-largest-solar-farm/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/03/tragedy-haunts-community-on-shore-of-sumatras-largest-solar-farm/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>12 Mar 2025 04:26:47 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Jaka Hendra Baittri]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Philip Jacobson]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/03/11165744/Malalo-Tigo-Jurai-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=295631</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Alternative Energy, Conservation, Development, Energy, Environment, Environmental Law, Governance, Hydroelectric Power, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Rights, Infrastructure, Lakes, Politics, Renewable Energy, Solar Power, and Wetlands]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[LAKE SINGKARAK, Indonesia — Mardianis recalls reading the Quran with his parents and two children here on the western shore of Lake Singkarak before the desperate cries of galodoh. A dark wall of rock barreled down the hillside as the family rushed to higher ground. Mardianis remembers the flood careening into the family’s small food [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[LAKE SINGKARAK, Indonesia — Mardianis recalls reading the Quran with his parents and two children here on the western shore of Lake Singkarak before the desperate cries of galodoh. A dark wall of rock barreled down the hillside as the family rushed to higher ground. Mardianis remembers the flood careening into the family’s small food store, and the totality of destruction to the community mosque. Dozens died here in Guguak Malalo ward, Tanah Datar district, in the Indonesian province of West Sumatra, during the flash flood, known locally as galodoh. That disaster occurred 25 years ago, but a layer of trauma lies beneath the surface of this lakeside community. “If there’s heavy rain and it lasts a while, I won&#8217;t dare spend the evening at the food stall,” Mardianis told Mongabay Indonesia. Many here blame the flash flood on blast explosives used to cut 17 kilometers (10 miles) of tunnels to channel water from the lake to a hydroelectric power plant. Malin, a young resident of Guguak Malalo, said the intake for the hydropower plant had introduced new currents that made fishing more difficult. “Many of the water sources were lost because of the tunnel that was built from Singkarak to Lubuk Alung,” Ardinis Arbain, a hydrologist at West Sumatra’s Andalas University, told Mongabay Indonesia, referring to a town to the west of the lake. A development plan prepared by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the country’s overseas development aid agency, showed only one in five homes in the&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2025/03/tragedy-haunts-community-on-shore-of-sumatras-largest-solar-farm/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2025/03/tragedy-haunts-community-on-shore-of-sumatras-largest-solar-farm/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-295631</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Sumatran tiger confirmed killed by snare in Indonesia’s West Sumatra province</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/08/sumatran-tiger-confirmed-killed-by-snare-in-indonesias-west-sumatra-province/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/08/sumatran-tiger-confirmed-killed-by-snare-in-indonesias-west-sumatra-province/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>13 Aug 2024 17:46:02 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Jaka Hendra BaittriVinolia]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Philip Jacobson]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/08/12114221/animals_02483-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=285986</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Big Cats, Conservation, Crime, Critically Endangered Species, Environment, Habitat Loss, Mammals, Poaching, Snares, Tigers, Top Predators, Wildlife, Wildlife Trade, and Wildlife Trafficking]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[PADANG, Indonesia — One of an estimated 400 of the world’s remaining Sumatran tigers was found dead on July 25 after becoming trapped in a wire snare set in Agam district, West Sumatra province. “Based on the results of the postmortem, this female Sumatran tiger died due to a ruptured trachea, fracture of the neck [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[PADANG, Indonesia — One of an estimated 400 of the world’s remaining Sumatran tigers was found dead on July 25 after becoming trapped in a wire snare set in Agam district, West Sumatra province. “Based on the results of the postmortem, this female Sumatran tiger died due to a ruptured trachea, fracture of the neck bone and respiratory failure because of being entangled around the throat,” Lugi Hartanto, the head of the West Sumatra conservation agency, told Mongabay Indonesia. The tiger was a female, no more than 3 years old, and had not given birth to cubs, Lugi said. Residents in Agam had complained of a tiger prowling farming areas over a period of around four months prior to the discovery. Efforts by conservation fieldworkers to capture the tiger using a cage trap, with the intention of moving the animal to a new location, had not been successful. “The plan since March was to evacuate the tiger, but we couldn’t catch it,” Lugi said. Lugi said farmers commonly used small snares to trap wild boar, which are known to eat food crops across much of rural Indonesia. Conservation agency staff had visited many villages in West Sumatra to request that farmers not set snares because of the danger to Sumatran tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrae). Lugi said agency staff would continue to work with residents living near tiger habitats, but emphasized the challenges involved because of the risks to life and livelihood that farmers faced on the ground. A tigress that&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2024/08/sumatran-tiger-confirmed-killed-by-snare-in-indonesias-west-sumatra-province/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/08/sumatran-tiger-confirmed-killed-by-snare-in-indonesias-west-sumatra-province/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-285986</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Sumatra villages count cost of deadly river tsunami swelled by illegal logging</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/04/sumatra-villages-count-cost-of-deadly-river-tsunami-swelled-by-illegal-logging/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/04/sumatra-villages-count-cost-of-deadly-river-tsunami-swelled-by-illegal-logging/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>17 Apr 2024 09:14:56 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Jaka Hendra BaittriVinolia]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Philip Jacobson]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/04/15125434/Bendri-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=280934</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Indonesian Forests]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Conservation, Crime, Deforestation, Disasters, Environment, Flooding, Governance, Illegal Logging, Land Rights, Logging, Rivers, Social Justice, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[SOUTH PESISIR, Indonesia — Bendri lived with his wife and child just 80 meters, or 260 feet, back from the Surantih Mudiak Dalam River, which flows from Sumatra’s Barisan Mountains down to the Indian Ocean coast of West Sumatra province. “There used to be a surau at the back here,” Bendri told Mongabay Indonesia at [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[SOUTH PESISIR, Indonesia — Bendri lived with his wife and child just 80 meters, or 260 feet, back from the Surantih Mudiak Dalam River, which flows from Sumatra’s Barisan Mountains down to the Indian Ocean coast of West Sumatra province. “There used to be a surau at the back here,” Bendri told Mongabay Indonesia at the ruins of his home, using the Malay word for an Islamic prayer hut. “It’s vanished — there’s no trace of it left.” Extreme rainfall over Sumatra on the evening of March 7 triggered fatal flash flooding that killed at least 30 people in two districts of West Sumatra. First responders arrived in Batu Balah, Bendri’s village, to find what looked like a war zone. Boulders and trees were carried downriver by the torrent, pulverizing homes and snatching lives in the village. Houses in South Pesisir, West Sumatra, were hit by flash floods and landslides. Image by Jaka Hendra Baittri/Mongabay Indonesia. Officials from Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency, the BNPB, said the landslides and flooding had damaged 29,000 homes across West Sumatra’s South Pesisir district, which encompasses Batu Balah. Moments before the flood destroyed Bendri’s home, the waves of mud, rock and debris smashed into the village of Langgai, located 5 kilometers (3 miles) upriver. Outside the tent set up for evacuees, Langgai resident Ria cried and fainted. People picked her up and carried her back into the tent, her home since the disaster struck. The torrent killed her husband and other family members. Ria’s child,&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2024/04/sumatra-villages-count-cost-of-deadly-river-tsunami-swelled-by-illegal-logging/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/04/sumatra-villages-count-cost-of-deadly-river-tsunami-swelled-by-illegal-logging/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-280934</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Indonesian utility PLN ordered to disclose coal plants’ emissions data</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/01/indonesian-utility-pln-ordered-to-disclose-coal-plants-emissions-data/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/01/indonesian-utility-pln-ordered-to-disclose-coal-plants-emissions-data/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>31 Jan 2024 03:03:18 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Hans Nicholas Jong]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Hayat Indriyatno]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2022/08/26091749/10-Suralaya-coal-fired-power-plant-in-Indonesia-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=278263</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Java, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Activism, Air Pollution, charcoal, Climate Change, Coal, data, Energy, Environment, Fossil Fuels, Fossils, Pollution, Public Health, and Waste]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — The Indonesian government’s freedom-of-information clearinghouse has ordered state-owned electricity utility PLN to disclose emissions data for some of the country’s biggest coal-fired power plants. The decision by the Public Information Commission (KIP) comes in response to a complaint filed in 2023 by Margaretha Aquina, a lawyer for the international program at U.K.-based advocacy [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — The Indonesian government’s freedom-of-information clearinghouse has ordered state-owned electricity utility PLN to disclose emissions data for some of the country’s biggest coal-fired power plants. The decision by the Public Information Commission (KIP) comes in response to a complaint filed in 2023 by Margaretha Aquina, a lawyer for the international program at U.K.-based advocacy group Earthsight. The complaint centered on PLN’s refusal to disclose upon request emissions and waste management data for its coal plants in Suralaya, Banten province, and Ombilin, West Sumatra province. In its Jan. 18 decision, the KIP said the data in question are public information, given that PLN is owned by the state and thus funded by the public, and should therefore be released to the public. But while the KIP ordered the release of the emissions data from Suralaya, a fleet of eight coal-fired plants, and Ombilin, a single plant, it ordered the release of waste management data only from the Ombilin plant. PLN had argued that the requested data constituted trade secrets and could be misused to spread disinformation, and thus should be kept out of the public view. “If data like this that benefits the public [if disclosed] is treated like a trade secret, then imagine the consequence,” Margaretha said at a press conference last year. “Imagine how journalists could assess where does the pollution in Jakarta come from. Imagine if there’s a captive coal plant that’s so polluting and its emission data is treated as confidential.” She cited past instances in&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2024/01/indonesian-utility-pln-ordered-to-disclose-coal-plants-emissions-data/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2024/01/indonesian-utility-pln-ordered-to-disclose-coal-plants-emissions-data/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-278263</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Indonesian village forms coast guard to protect octopus in Mentawai Islands</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/10/indonesia-village-forms-coast-guard-to-shield-octopus-in-mentawai-islands/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/10/indonesia-village-forms-coast-guard-to-shield-octopus-in-mentawai-islands/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>03 Oct 2023 05:52:59 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Jaka Hendra Baittri]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Philip Jacobson]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Food systems]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/10/02142238/nelayan-sinaka-tangkap-gurita-di-pulau-beriulou-1200x800-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=273771</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Indonesian Fisheries and Oceans]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Coastal Ecosystems, Community Development, Community-based Conservation, Conservation, Conservation Solutions, Coral Reefs, Environment, Environmental Law, Fish, Fisheries, Fishing, Food, food security, Invertebrates, Marine Protected Areas, Oceans, Overfishing, Protected Areas, Saltwater Fish, Solutions, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[SOUTH PAGAI, Indonesia — A white coastal beacon stood in place against the surf as gales hurtled across the Indian Ocean here off South Pagai, one of the Mentawai Islands off the west coast of Sumatra in Indonesia. When conditions subside, fishers like Sutrisno Madogaho will make their way to the beach, untie their boats [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[SOUTH PAGAI, Indonesia — A white coastal beacon stood in place against the surf as gales hurtled across the Indian Ocean here off South Pagai, one of the Mentawai Islands off the west coast of Sumatra in Indonesia. When conditions subside, fishers like Sutrisno Madogaho will make their way to the beach, untie their boats and, armed with spears and hooks, begin searching for octopus — a traditional vocation that today faces a crisis. &#8220;In the past, right here we could get 80 kilos [176 pounds] in one day,” Sutrisno told Mongabay Indonesia. But the days of record catches are gone. In the years since Sutrisno began earning a living from catching octopus, the 32-year-old has seen the average dockside price he receives for the cephalopods increase by an order of magnitude, from around 4,000 rupiah (26 U.S. cents) per kilo (about 12 cents per pound) to more than 10 times that today, spurred in part by rising demand in countries like the U.S. and Europe. “Octopus is becoming increasingly popular in several markets, but there are issues with supply,” according to the most recent update from Globefish, an information service published by the Food and Agriculture Organization, a U.N. agency. “There has been a decline in catches in recent years, with limited availability pushing prices up.” While the hot demand has boosted incomes in this corner of the Mentawai Islands for several years, the inflated prices have also sparked a rush that many here now say was unsustainable. The&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2023/10/indonesia-village-forms-coast-guard-to-shield-octopus-in-mentawai-islands/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/10/indonesia-village-forms-coast-guard-to-shield-octopus-in-mentawai-islands/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-273771</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Sumatran tiger arrives at Tacoma captive-breeding program</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/01/sumatran-tiger-arrives-at-tacoma-captive-breeding-program/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/01/sumatran-tiger-arrives-at-tacoma-captive-breeding-program/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>06 Jan 2023 10:00:50 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Jeremy Hance]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Erik Hoffner]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/01/05235012/Sanjiv23-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=264374</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, North America, North Sumatra, South Sumatra, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, United States, Washington, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Big Cats, Captive Breeding, Cats, Conservation, Critically Endangered Species, Endangered Species, Environment, Tigers, Wildlife, and Zoos]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[A known breeding Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) has made its way to Point Defiance Zoo &#38; Aquarium in Tacoma, Washington state, in hopes it will produce more cubs of this critically endangered big cat. The zoo is set to debut Sanjiv, an 11-year-old male tiger weighing in at 130 kilograms (286 pounds), to the [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[A known breeding Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) has made its way to Point Defiance Zoo &amp; Aquarium in Tacoma, Washington state, in hopes it will produce more cubs of this critically endangered big cat. The zoo is set to debut Sanjiv, an 11-year-old male tiger weighing in at 130 kilograms (286 pounds), to the public on Jan. 6. Sanjiv has already fathered four cubs, and keepers and conservationists hope he will mate with the two female Sumatran tigers on site, Kali, 9 years old, and Indah, who is 8. Sanjiv was transferred in December from the Topeka Zoo &amp; Conservation Center, but keepers say he’s already adjusting well to his new home. “[Sanjiv] is a very social and expressive tiger who loves to interact with his keepers and our two female tigers,” assistant curator Erin Pritchard said in a press release. “He’s always chuffing and vocalizing, and he’s fascinated with the swinging gibbons and other species that share his Asian Forest Sanctuary home.” Captive breeding can prove difficult, however. Point Defiance Zoo &amp; Aquarium lost a female Sumatran tiger in 2021 after a male mortally wounded her during a breeding introduction. Sumatran tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrae) are named after their home in Indonesia, a tropical, forested island larger than California. They are the smallest of living tigers, and the only tiger left that inhabits an island. As a top predator, the Sumatran tiger plays a key role in the island’s ecosystems. Although scientists are currently debating tiger taxonomy, Sumatran&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2023/01/sumatran-tiger-arrives-at-tacoma-captive-breeding-program/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2023/01/sumatran-tiger-arrives-at-tacoma-captive-breeding-program/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-264374</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Tensions boil in Sumatra over a palm oil promise villagers say has yet to be kept</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/11/tensions-boil-in-sumatra-over-a-palm-oil-promise-villagers-say-has-yet-to-be-kept/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/11/tensions-boil-in-sumatra-over-a-palm-oil-promise-villagers-say-has-yet-to-be-kept/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>09 Nov 2022 03:44:25 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Jaka Hendra Baittri]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Philip Jacobson]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2022/11/09033801/lokasi-reclaiming-spi-dari-atas-3-1200x800-1-768x512.jpeg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=262385</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Indonesian Palm Oil]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Community Development, Deforestation, Environment, Environmental Law, Farming, Forestry, Forests, Governance, Green, Indigenous Peoples, Land Conflict, Land Grabbing, Land Rights, Land Use Change, Palm Oil, Plantations, Politics, Rainforests, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[WEST PASAMAN, Indonesia — Eren says he can’t forget the day in 2000 when he fled from the plantation security guards. He had joined fellow residents of Nagari Aia Gadang village, in West Pasaman district on the island of Sumatra, to meet representatives of PT Anam Koto about the community’s entitlement to a proportion of [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[WEST PASAMAN, Indonesia — Eren says he can’t forget the day in 2000 when he fled from the plantation security guards. He had joined fellow residents of Nagari Aia Gadang village, in West Pasaman district on the island of Sumatra, to meet representatives of PT Anam Koto about the community’s entitlement to a proportion of the company’s oil palm plantation area. “All of a sudden a red motorbike and a red car carrying personnel arrived,” Eren told Mongabay. They chased Eren and the others. Moments later, Eren was dripping with sweat, short of breath, and limping past trucks carrying oil palm fruit. As he lost consciousness, he could no longer feel the punches connecting with his body. When Eren came to, he found himself in the company’s office surrounded by people. He was then taken to hospital and detained. More than two decades later, the land conflict here in Nagari Aia Gadang persists over a nationwide problem that continues to hold back a large share of Indonesia’s smallholder farmers: plasma. Since the 1980s, companies in Indonesia have cut deals with communities to share a proportion of their plantations, in plots widely known as “plasma,” part of efforts to gain support and access to financing. Under a 2007 law, providing plasma became legally mandatory, with firms required to give at least 20% of any new plantation area to communities. Plasma was intended to support rural families in oil palm heartlands by ensuring community access to land, seeds, fertilizer and a guaranteed&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2022/11/tensions-boil-in-sumatra-over-a-palm-oil-promise-villagers-say-has-yet-to-be-kept/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/11/tensions-boil-in-sumatra-over-a-palm-oil-promise-villagers-say-has-yet-to-be-kept/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-262385</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>A conservation failure in Sumatra serves a cautionary tale for PES schemes</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/a-conservation-failure-in-sumatra-serves-a-cautionary-tale-for-pes-schemes/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/a-conservation-failure-in-sumatra-serves-a-cautionary-tale-for-pes-schemes/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>30 Jun 2022 15:38:13 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Cassie Freund]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Philip Jacobson]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[global forests]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2022/06/30104843/6-Kerinci-Seblat-agriculture-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=257805</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Jambi, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Biodiversity, carbon, Community Development, Community-based Conservation, Conservation, Conservation Finance, Deforestation, Environment, Environmental Law, Forests, Poverty, Protected Areas, Rainforests, Saving Rainforests, Solutions, Threats To Rainforests, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The Kerinci Seblat landscape, a highly biodiverse rainforest in western Sumatra, is one of the Indonesian island’s crown jewels. Anchored by the 14,000-square-kilometer (5,405-square-mile) Kerinci Seblat National Park, its mountainous terrain is home to Sumatran tigers and elephants, more than 300 bird species, and the notoriously smelly corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum). Mount Kerinci, an active [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The Kerinci Seblat landscape, a highly biodiverse rainforest in western Sumatra, is one of the Indonesian island’s crown jewels. Anchored by the 14,000-square-kilometer (5,405-square-mile) Kerinci Seblat National Park, its mountainous terrain is home to Sumatran tigers and elephants, more than 300 bird species, and the notoriously smelly corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum). Mount Kerinci, an active volcano, towers over the landscape below, which is dotted with about 460 villages, each culturally and linguistically distinct. Protecting this vast landscape is imperative for Indonesia’s unique biodiversity, and there have been both conservation successes and failures in the 40 years since the park was established. Now, research into one such failure, published in Environmental Research Letters, has linked it to increased deforestation in villages that originally participated in the program. These findings underscore the urgency for conservationists of learning from past mistakes: their ramifications can last far beyond the lifetime of the project, inflicting long-term harm that may outweigh any conservation benefits they produce in the short term. The Kerinci Seblat landscape is a highly biodiverse rainforest in western Sumatra. Image by Luke Mackin via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). The new study was performed by James Erbaugh, an environmental social scientist at The Nature Conservancy and Dartmouth University in the U.S. He examined the long-term ramifications of the Kerinci Seblat Integrated Conservation and Development Project, an $18.8 million World Bank project initiated in 1996. Part of the project centered on a conservation strategy called payments for ecosystem services (PES). The basic premise of PES&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/a-conservation-failure-in-sumatra-serves-a-cautionary-tale-for-pes-schemes/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/a-conservation-failure-in-sumatra-serves-a-cautionary-tale-for-pes-schemes/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-257805</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Sumatra palm plantations the usual suspects as unusual burning razes peatlands</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/sumatra-palm-plantations-the-usual-suspects-as-unusual-burning-razes-peatlands/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/sumatra-palm-plantations-the-usual-suspects-as-unusual-burning-razes-peatlands/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>02 Jun 2022 14:39:30 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Hans Nicholas Jong]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Hayat Indriyatno]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2019/11/01030506/Cengal-OKI1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=256739</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Indonesian Forests and Indonesian Palm Oil]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[agribusiness, Air Pollution, Business, Climate Change, Corporate Environmental Transgressors, Corporations, Environment, Fires, Forests, International Trade, Palm Oil, Peatlands, Plantations, Protected Areas, Rainforests, Trade, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — Fires in areas of carbon-intense peatland forest on the island of Sumatra appear to have been set in and around oil palm plantation concessions and could signal the start of another season of forest-razing burns in Indonesia. The fires burned 6,168 hectares (15,241 acres) of peatlands — an area 18 times the size [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — Fires in areas of carbon-intense peatland forest on the island of Sumatra appear to have been set in and around oil palm plantation concessions and could signal the start of another season of forest-razing burns in Indonesia. The fires burned 6,168 hectares (15,241 acres) of peatlands — an area 18 times the size of New York City’s Central Park — in the district of Pesisir Selatan, West Sumatra province, between Jan. 28 and April 23, according to satellite data from forest monitoring platform Nusantara Atlas. Most of the burning occurred between March 24 and April 20. While the island of Sumatra is a hotspot for fires in Indonesia, with provinces like South Sumatra, Riau and Jambi routinely having some of the largest fires in the country — set deliberately to clear land ahead of planting — West Sumatra has historically had fewer and smaller fires. The area burned so far this year is already triple the total from the particularly intense fire season of 2019, when 2,133 hectares (5,271 acres) of land was torched in West Sumatra, out of a total of 1.65 million hectares (4.08 million acres) nationwide, according to official data. Also in 2019, only 858 hectares (2,120 acres) of the burned land in West Sumatra was peatland. This time around, the entire burned area is peatland, all of it in the single district of Pesisir Selatan, prompting environmental activists to call for an investigation. Map of the burned peatlands in Pesisir Selatan district, West Sumatra&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/sumatra-palm-plantations-the-usual-suspects-as-unusual-burning-razes-peatlands/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/sumatra-palm-plantations-the-usual-suspects-as-unusual-burning-razes-peatlands/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-256739</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Lack of resolution mechanisms allow palm oil conflicts to fester in Indonesia</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/11/lack-of-resolution-mechanisms-allow-palm-oil-conflicts-to-fester-in-indonesia/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/11/lack-of-resolution-mechanisms-allow-palm-oil-conflicts-to-fester-in-indonesia/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>29 Nov 2021 14:13:56 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Hans Nicholas Jong]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Hans Nicholas Jong]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/11/29140835/IMG_0015-1200x800-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=250008</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Indonesian Palm Oil]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, Riau, Southeast Asia, West Kalimantan, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Conflict, Environment, Human Rights, Land Conflict, Land Grabbing, Land Rights, Palm Oil, Plantations, Resource Conflict, and Social Conflict]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — Indonesia has no effective mechanism for resolving its epidemic of land conflicts between rural communities and palm oil companies, according to a new study. Indonesia is the world’s top producer of palm oil, but the industry’s rapid expansion has fueled deforestation and allegations of land grabbing throughout the archipelago nation. The study, produced [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[JAKARTA — Indonesia has no effective mechanism for resolving its epidemic of land conflicts between rural communities and palm oil companies, according to a new study. Indonesia is the world’s top producer of palm oil, but the industry’s rapid expansion has fueled deforestation and allegations of land grabbing throughout the archipelago nation. The study, produced by Dutch and Indonesian academics in collaboration with six Indonesian NGOs, is billed as the first-ever systematic documentation of a large number of land conflicts in the Southeast Asian country. Researchers analyzed 150 cases in four provinces — Riau, West Sumatra, West Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan — randomly selected from a list of 554 cases they identified by examining media and government reports from the past decade. They interviewed community representatives from each of the 150 cases, in some cases traveling to the affecting villages to meet sources in person. They found that existing channels for addressing conflict between villagers and plantation firms — namely, informal mediation facilitated by local authorities, the courts, and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil — generally “fail to produce meaningful results for the affected communities.” These mechanisms rarely solved conflicts, and even when they did, the process took nine years on average. In nearly 70% of the studied conflicts, the communities reported that they had not or had barely succeeded in addressing their grievances. These cases had been ongoing for an average of 11 years. With no other avenue for redress, communities often resort to staging demonstrations. These typically&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/11/lack-of-resolution-mechanisms-allow-palm-oil-conflicts-to-fester-in-indonesia/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/11/lack-of-resolution-mechanisms-allow-palm-oil-conflicts-to-fester-in-indonesia/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-250008</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Primary-colored poison: Lead paint still a major threat to Indonesian kids</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/11/primary-colored-poison-lead-paint-still-a-major-threat-to-indonesian-kids/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/11/primary-colored-poison-lead-paint-still-a-major-threat-to-indonesian-kids/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>17 Nov 2021 15:23:09 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Ayat S. Karokaro]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Philip Jacobson]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/11/17112746/6-children-playground-lead-paints-peeling-indonesia-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=249554</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Environment, Environmental Law, Health, Law Enforcement, Poisoning, Pollution, and Public Health]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[MEDAN, Indonesia — At the corner of Sei Batanghari Road in Medan, the capital of Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, kindergarten students run around a building in their school uniforms. The bell to call them back to class hasn&#8217;t rung yet. Most of the kids are enjoying the playground’s slides and swings. Almost all of the [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[MEDAN, Indonesia — At the corner of Sei Batanghari Road in Medan, the capital of Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, kindergarten students run around a building in their school uniforms. The bell to call them back to class hasn&#8217;t rung yet. Most of the kids are enjoying the playground’s slides and swings. Almost all of the playground equipment is painted in bright primary colors: yellow and red, blue and green. In their classrooms, the tables and chairs are also painted bright colors. A similar scene plays out in nearby Beringin Park, in front of the governor’s office, where more children play on playground equipment provided by the local government. Much of the equipment here is also coated in bright shades of red, yellow and blue paint. Medan is hardly unique in this regard; many cities feature public facilities for kids painted in bright colors. But in Indonesia, those shades of paint, meant to make things appear more kid-friendly, actually makes them more of a serious health risk to children, according to a new study showing that a large percentage of the paints produced and used in Indonesia, particularly the brightly colored kinds used around children, contain dangerously high levels of lead. The study was produced by the Nexus3 Foundation, an Indonesian nonprofit working to safeguard the public from environmental toxins, and the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN). It found that most wood and metal paints in Indonesia still contain high concentrations of lead, many with more than 600 parts per million&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/11/primary-colored-poison-lead-paint-still-a-major-threat-to-indonesian-kids/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/11/primary-colored-poison-lead-paint-still-a-major-threat-to-indonesian-kids/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-249554</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Illegal coal mine tunnels threaten a Sumatran village</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/04/illegal-coal-mine-tunnels-threaten-a-sumatran-village/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/04/illegal-coal-mine-tunnels-threaten-a-sumatran-village/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>19 Apr 2021 09:22:46 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Jaka Hendra Baittri]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Isabel Esterman]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/04/19090747/SAWAHLUNTO-LAGI-20210219113558_IMG_5321-1-1536x860-1-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=241738</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Indonesian coal]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Activism, Coal, Energy, Environment, Forests, Governance, Mining, and Rainforests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[SAWAHLUNTO, Indonesia — Manap says he’s worried about his garden. What he thought would be a nice retirement project after years of working in coal mines is quickly turning into a disaster. &#8220;I planted 300 clove bushes, but 200 died,&#8221; he tells Mongabay Indonesia. Manap, a resident of Sikalang village in the town of Sawahlunto, [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[SAWAHLUNTO, Indonesia — Manap says he’s worried about his garden. What he thought would be a nice retirement project after years of working in coal mines is quickly turning into a disaster. &#8220;I planted 300 clove bushes, but 200 died,&#8221; he tells Mongabay Indonesia. Manap, a resident of Sikalang village in the town of Sawahlunto, West Sumatra province, has tried planting a variety crops, but he suspects that recent changes in soil fertility and moisture content are responsible for his lack of success — changes that many other villagers have attributed to a nearby coal mine that’s expanded well beyond its permitted area and is getting closer to their land. Manap&#8217;s 1.5-hectare (3.7-acre) farm is located on the side of a hill behind Sikalang village. At the top of the hill, beyond the rows of struggling plants, the land drops away suddenly, revealing a barren wasteland spreading out from three unnaturally turquoise ponds. &#8220;That&#8217;s an old mine pit,&#8221; Manap says, pointing to the murky bodies of water separated by haul road. He says the government had promised the area would be reclaimed and turned into a recreational lake with rides and other tourist attractions. Sikalang village overlooks abandoned mining pits downhill in the town of Sawahlunto. Residents say officials promised the area would be rehabilitated into a park and tourist attraction. Image by Jaka Hendra Baittri/Mongabay Indonesia. There are no paddle boats, but loaded trucks lumber by, heavy with coal. The coal comes from the web of mine shafts operated&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2021/04/illegal-coal-mine-tunnels-threaten-a-sumatran-village/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2021/04/illegal-coal-mine-tunnels-threaten-a-sumatran-village/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-241738</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>In Sumatra, authorities fight a resurgence of illegal gold mining</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/02/indonesia-sumatra-gold-mining-illegal-deforestation-environment/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/02/indonesia-sumatra-gold-mining-illegal-deforestation-environment/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>10 Feb 2020 03:44:50 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Een Irawan Putra]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Basten Gokkon]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/02/06100438/Foto-2-768x512.jpeg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=226924</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Indonesian Forests]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Deforestation, Environment, Forest Destruction, Forests, Gold Mining, Mining, Natural Resources, Rainforest Destruction, Rainforests, Threats To Rainforests, Tropical Deforestation, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[Authorities in Indonesia have expanded their efforts to shut down illegal gold mining in Sumatra, where they practice has grown in recent years. Officials in West Sumatra province pledged last December to throttle supplies of fuel in locations where the problem is particularly rife, as well as crack down on vendors of mercury and suppliers [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[Authorities in Indonesia have expanded their efforts to shut down illegal gold mining in Sumatra, where they practice has grown in recent years. Officials in West Sumatra province pledged last December to throttle supplies of fuel in locations where the problem is particularly rife, as well as crack down on vendors of mercury and suppliers of heavy equipment such as excavators. “As of the end of 2019, illegal gold mining is rife again,” said Abdul Aziz, the head of Winalsa, a local naturalist community. He attributed this rise to a reduction in monitoring efforts by law enforcers in West Sumatra. “The miners wouldn’t dare to operate if patrolling was tight,” he said. Gold miners working near a river within the Batanghari Protected Forest in West Sumatra. Image by Een Irawan Putra. Illegal gold mining has long been a problem in West Sumatra. In 2014 authorities declared they had eradicated the practice in the province. Since then, however, reports of artisanal miners operating throughout the province, including in ostensibly protected areas, have increased. The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), the country’s biggest green NGO, looked into those reports late last year. In just the district of South Solok, along the Batang Bangko River, it said it found six active mines and 22 abandoned ones, as well as 33 excavators operating inside the Batanghari Protected Forest. Mahyulita, 41, a gold miner working in that area, said the mining site is on the local community’s ancestral land. She told Mongabay Indonesia that&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/02/indonesia-sumatra-gold-mining-illegal-deforestation-environment/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2020/02/indonesia-sumatra-gold-mining-illegal-deforestation-environment/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-226924</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>A tiger refuge in Sumatra gets a reprieve from road building</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/08/a-tiger-refuge-in-sumatra-gets-a-reprieve-from-road-building/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/08/a-tiger-refuge-in-sumatra-gets-a-reprieve-from-road-building/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>31 Aug 2019 07:57:07 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rod Harbinson]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Isabel Esterman]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2017/07/17171544/sumatran-tiger-r-butler-768x512.jpeg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=222098</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Southeast Asian infrastructure]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Bengkulu, Indonesia, Jambi, South Sumatra, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Conservation, Deforestation, Encroachment, Endangered Species, Environment, Infrastructure, Mammals, Protected Areas, Rainforests, Roads, Tigers, and Wildlife]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
											<grant>
							<![CDATA[DFFF2019]]>
						</grant>
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The rainforests that once carpeted Indonesia&#8217;s Sumatra Island are among the world&#8217;s most biodiverse ecosystems, home to iconic species like the Sumatran tiger, rhino and orangutan. They are also among the most imperiled; in just two decades, between 1990 and 2010, Sumatra lost 40 percent of its old-growth forest. The tigers, rhinos and orangutans that [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The rainforests that once carpeted Indonesia&#8217;s Sumatra Island are among the world&#8217;s most biodiverse ecosystems, home to iconic species like the Sumatran tiger, rhino and orangutan. They are also among the most imperiled; in just two decades, between 1990 and 2010, Sumatra lost 40 percent of its old-growth forest. The tigers, rhinos and orangutans that roamed those forests are now critically endangered. Much of the intact forest that remains is protected, at least nominally, in a series of National Parks, and, since 2004, as a UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra (TRHS). Rainforest foliage surrounds a waterfall outside Lempur village in Sumatra. Image by Rod Harbinson/RodHarbinson.com. In recent years, concern has grown that Indonesian authorities are not doing enough to protect this critical biodiversity hotspot. Since 2011, the site has been inscribed on UNESCO&#8217;s List of World Heritage In Danger due to the risks of logging, encroachment, road expansion and poaching. In 2016, UNESCO flagged up concerns about road construction in the area, particularly in Kerinci Seblat National Park, a protected area extending for 350 kilometers (217 miles) from northwest to southeast along the rugged spine of the Bukit Barisan Mountains. In the years since, it&#8217;s been some good news and some bad news for Kerinci Seblat National Park. Canceled Roads In 2016, UNESCO identified 12 planned or proposed road projects in four zones of the park. Now, park officials say, the list of road expansion projects of concern has been whittled down to&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/08/a-tiger-refuge-in-sumatra-gets-a-reprieve-from-road-building/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2019/08/a-tiger-refuge-in-sumatra-gets-a-reprieve-from-road-building/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-222098</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Indonesia, a top plastic polluter, mobilizes 20,000 citizens to clean up the mess</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/09/indonesia-a-top-plastic-polluter-mobilizes-20000-citizens-to-clean-it-up/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/09/indonesia-a-top-plastic-polluter-mobilizes-20000-citizens-to-clean-it-up/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>04 Sep 2018 23:44:45 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Mongabay Indonesia]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Mongabay Editor]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2018/09/04233147/menghadap-laut-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=209940</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Indonesian Fisheries and Oceans]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Bali, Gorontalo, Indonesia, Jakarta, North Sulawesi, Southeast Asia, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Community-based Conservation, Conservation, Conservation Solutions, Environment, Environmental Policy, Global Environmental Crisis, Governance, Marine Conservation, Oceans, Plastic, Pollution, Solutions, Sustainability, Waste, and Water Pollution]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
											<grant>
							<![CDATA[2016-64535]]>
						</grant>
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[&#8220;We need to keep this river clean,” says Muhammad Yusuf, a fisheries official from Padang, the capital of the Indonesian province of West Sumatra. “We’ve got to keep people from dumping trash here.” Nearby, where the river meets the ocean, Padang’s idyllic beaches have become an eyesore, littered with plastic trash. “We need to make [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[&#8220;We need to keep this river clean,” says Muhammad Yusuf, a fisheries official from Padang, the capital of the Indonesian province of West Sumatra. “We’ve got to keep people from dumping trash here.” Nearby, where the river meets the ocean, Padang’s idyllic beaches have become an eyesore, littered with plastic trash. “We need to make better environmental decisions,” Yusuf says, picking a plastic bag from the water. Yusuf was one of some 20,000 Indonesians who participated in “Face the Sea,” a one-day event held simultaneously in 76 locations across the country on Aug. 19. The purpose of the event was to draw attention to the alarming spread of plastic waste in the oceans, and the need for better approaches to address the burgeoning crisis. Indonesia is the world’s second-largest plastic polluter, after China. It produces 3.2 million tonnes of mismanaged plastic waste a year, 1.29 million tonnes of which ends up in the sea. Some 10 billion plastic bags in the Southeast Asian country alone, weighing 85,000 tons, are dumped into the environment each year, according to state figures. Globally, ocean currents swirl the trash into giant garbage patches, the biggest of which, in the northern Pacific Ocean, is twice the size of Texas. Not a single square mile of the Earth’s ocean surface is plastic-free, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. When marine creatures likes whales, sea turtles or fish mistake floating plastic waste for food, they swallow material they can’t digest. The plastic stays lodged in their&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/09/indonesia-a-top-plastic-polluter-mobilizes-20000-citizens-to-clean-it-up/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2018/09/indonesia-a-top-plastic-polluter-mobilizes-20000-citizens-to-clean-it-up/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-209940</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Recognition of Mentawai tribes marks Indonesia’s latest piecemeal concession to indigenous groups</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/12/recognition-of-mentawai-tribes-marks-indonesias-latest-piecemeal-concession-to-indigenous-groups/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/12/recognition-of-mentawai-tribes-marks-indonesias-latest-piecemeal-concession-to-indigenous-groups/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>15 Dec 2017 03:12:21 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Basten Gokkon]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Basten Gokkon]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2017/12/14082815/perda-mentawai4-3-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=202119</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Jokowi Commitments]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Activism, Community Development, Community-based Conservation, Conservation, Environment, Forestry, Forests, Governance, Human Rights, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Rights, Land Grabbing, Land Rights, and Politics]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[The indigenous inhabitants of Indonesia’s Mentawai district, a cluster of islands off the southwestern coast of Sumatra, are a step closer to reclaiming their ancestral rights to their land from the state, a development that has been years in the making. The Mentawai district legislature last month passed a regulation that recognizes the region’s indigenous [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[The indigenous inhabitants of Indonesia’s Mentawai district, a cluster of islands off the southwestern coast of Sumatra, are a step closer to reclaiming their ancestral rights to their land from the state, a development that has been years in the making. The Mentawai district legislature last month passed a regulation that recognizes the region’s indigenous communities. It is the latest in a series of local regulations issued throughout Indonesia in the wake of a landmark 2013 Constitutional Court ruling that ended state control of indigenous peoples’ customary forests. That ruling, though, has not been followed up by national legislation to define who qualifies as indigenous and their rights. The lack of legal certainty has left indigenous groups — including, until recently, those of Mentawai — vulnerable to abuse and loss of land to more powerful parties, such as the government and mining and plantation companies. With the passage of the district regulation, which the Mentawai tribes had campaigned for since 2015, Indonesia has taken another step forward, albeit at the local level, to restore to its indigenous peoples the right to manage their lands and forests. A forest stream in Indonesia&#8217;s Mentawai district. Photo by Vinolia Ahmad/Mongabay-Indonesia. “We have a rich culture,” said Saibi Samukop Surkino Sanenek, an indigenous Mentawai elder, in response to the passage of the regulation. “We believe that with the regulation we can have a better future and our economy will grow.” While the district regulation stops short of defining any specific rights or identifying boundaries&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2017/12/recognition-of-mentawai-tribes-marks-indonesias-latest-piecemeal-concession-to-indigenous-groups/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-202119</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Two Indonesian soldiers found to be smuggling dozens of porcupines</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/09/two-indonesian-soldiers-found-to-be-smuggling-dozens-of-porcupines/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/09/two-indonesian-soldiers-found-to-be-smuggling-dozens-of-porcupines/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>25 Sep 2017 04:53:33 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Vinolia]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Basten Gokkon]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2017/09/25010829/1200px-Hystrix_brachyura_Malayan_porcupine_-_Khao_Yai_National_Park-768x512.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=199413</guid>

					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Animals, Biodiversity, Crime, Environment, Illegal Trade, Law Enforcement, Mammals, Military, Wildlife, Wildlife Rescues, Wildlife Trade, and Wildlife Trafficking]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[PADANG, Indonesia — Two soldiers were caught trying to smuggle dozens of Malayan porcupines (Hystrix brachyura) across provincial borders, the latest arrest of a military officer for wildlife trafficking. The porcupines are prized for the bezoar stones that form in their stomachs, a component in traditional Chinese medicine thought to cure a range of ailments, [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[PADANG, Indonesia — Two soldiers were caught trying to smuggle dozens of Malayan porcupines (Hystrix brachyura) across provincial borders, the latest arrest of a military officer for wildlife trafficking. The porcupines are prized for the bezoar stones that form in their stomachs, a component in traditional Chinese medicine thought to cure a range of ailments, from dengue fever to cancer. The state conservation agency had received a tip about the soldiers’ contraband as the pair drove from West to North Sumatra. When confronted, the suspects tried to flee, but agency officials and police blocked their way. Cages full of Malayan porcupines are seen in the trunk of the soldiers&#8217; car. Photo courtesy of the Pasaman conservation agency. The soldiers were turned over to the military police in Pasaman district, West Sumatra, for questioning. They were eventually sent back to North Sumatra, where they are stationed at an air base. “Our mission was only to thwart the porcupine smuggling,” said Edi Candra, head of the conservation agency’s office in Pasaman. “We leave the legal matters to their unit. The two suspects have already made a statement never to do it again.” The Wildlife Conservation Society, an international NGO, slammed their release as another example of impunity when it comes to influential figures who sell animals illegally. The Indonesian military has its own process for investigating soldiers charged with a crime. This consistently falls short of delivering justice to traffickers, said Irma Hermawati, coordinator of the NGO’s Wildlife Crime Unit. “If all&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2017/09/two-indonesian-soldiers-found-to-be-smuggling-dozens-of-porcupines/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
										<wfw:commentRss>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/09/two-indonesian-soldiers-found-to-be-smuggling-dozens-of-porcupines/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-199413</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Wilmar appeals RSPO ruling that it grabbed indigenous lands in Sumatra</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/05/wilmar-appeals-rspo-ruling-that-it-grabbed-indigenous-lands-in-sumatra/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/05/wilmar-appeals-rspo-ruling-that-it-grabbed-indigenous-lands-in-sumatra/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>17 May 2017 01:35:30 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rachel Diaz-Bastin]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Mongabay Editor]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2016/02/02182431/Oil-palm-riau-495x330.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=195775</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Indonesian Palm Oil]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Certification, Corporate Environmental Transgressors, Environment, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Rights, Land Conflict, Land Grabbing, Land Reform, Land Rights, Land Use Change, Palm Oil, and Plantations]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[On Jan. 1, the world’s largest association for ethical palm oil production found that Wilmar International had violated the rights of the indigenous Kapa community of West Sumatra, Indonesia, when the company obtained its land to plant oil palm on it. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) also approved a plan that, if implemented, would allow [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[On Jan. 1, the world’s largest association for ethical palm oil production found that Wilmar International had violated the rights of the indigenous Kapa community of West Sumatra, Indonesia, when the company obtained its land to plant oil palm on it. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) also approved a plan that, if implemented, would allow the Kapa to retain control of their customary territory. But now, following an appeal by Wilmar stating that it has found possible breaches in the complaint-handling process within the RSPO, that decision may be in jeopardy.  The initial ruling, that Singapore-based Wilmar had violated community rights and RSPO rules when it tried to take out a Land Use Rights (HGU) permit over Kapa land, signaled progress in the long-running dispute between the palm oil giant and the indigenous group. Based on the advice of an independent consultant, the RSPO&#8217;s Complaints Panel also recommended that the disputed land should be remeasured for development approval with better community participation. This recommendation was intended to give the Kapa more clarity on which lands were taken over by Wilmar, and how to re-allocate the land between Wilmar’s core estate and smallholdings for Kapa people, which would allow them to glean some benefit from Wilmar’s presence in their territory. Following this decision, the company appeared willing to comply. “Wilmar respects the decisions of the RSPO Complaints Panel and will act accordingly,” Perpetua George, the company’s general manager for sustainability, said earlier this year. Now that sentiment has changed. According to&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2017/05/wilmar-appeals-rspo-ruling-that-it-grabbed-indigenous-lands-in-sumatra/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-195775</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>A return to mixed roots in a Sumatran forest</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/05/a-return-to-mixed-roots-in-a-sumatran-forest/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/05/a-return-to-mixed-roots-in-a-sumatran-forest/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>02 May 2017 04:32:43 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Dedek Hendry]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Mongabay Editor]]>
					</author>
							<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
										<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2016/04/01214555/photo2_animals_02486-495x330.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=195302</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Global Forests, Indonesia's Forest Guardians, and Indonesian Forests]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Agriculture, Agroforestry, Community Forests, Conservation, Culture, Environment, Environmental Policy, Forestry, Forests, Happy-upbeat Environmental, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Rights, Land Conflict, Land Reform, Land Rights, Land Use Change, National Parks, Protected Areas, Rainforests, and Tropical Forests]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[TIK SIRONG, Indonesia — It is often said in this archipelago country that the best solutions come through consensus. The phrase typically refers to people. But sometimes a compromise is made across time. Take for instance the Rejang people, who live in 65 villages abutting Sumatra’s stunning Kerinci Seblat National Park. Measuring in at twice [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[TIK SIRONG, Indonesia — It is often said in this archipelago country that the best solutions come through consensus. The phrase typically refers to people. But sometimes a compromise is made across time. Take for instance the Rejang people, who live in 65 villages abutting Sumatra’s stunning Kerinci Seblat National Park. Measuring in at twice the size of Bali, Kerinci Seblat is a dramatic park dotted with caves, peaks and the largest crater lake in Southeast Asia. One of the last homes of the endangered Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae), the park also boasts 370 bird species. But the park was established in 1999 without consulting the peoples already extant here. With clan lands falling in the area the national government cordoned off for conservation, the Rejang “were labeled ‘illegals’ and ‘encroachers’,” said Erwin Basrin, director of the Akar Foundation, a local community development group. Along with modernization and market forces, “This changed their view of how forests and their gardens should be managed.” The treatement of the Rejang is but one example of an ugly history in the field of conservation of marginalizing indigenous peoples. But today in Sumatra, years after Kerinci Seblat absorbed their clan lands, the Rejang are rediscovering their heritage by relearning the polycultural agriculture practiced by their ancestors. Retro-gardening In the tiny village of Tik Sirong, former headman Busroni was the first to convert his coffee grove into a polyculture garden — in which multiple crops are grown in the same space — interspersing the&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2017/05/a-return-to-mixed-roots-in-a-sumatran-forest/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-195302</doi>				</item>
						<item>
					<title>Wilmar grabbed indigenous lands in Sumatra, RSPO finds</title>
					<link>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/02/wilmar-grabbed-indigenous-lands-in-sumatra-rspo-finds/</link>
					<comments>https://news.mongabay.com/2017/02/wilmar-grabbed-indigenous-lands-in-sumatra-rspo-finds/#respond</comments>
					<pubDate>16 Feb 2017 03:13:31 +0000</pubDate>
											<dc:creator>
							<![CDATA[Rachel Diaz-Bastin]]>
						</dc:creator>
										<author>
						<![CDATA[Mongabay Editor]]>
					</author>
															<enclosure url="https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2016/01/02190133/Aceh-palm-oil-fruit-495x330.jpg" type="image/jpeg" />
					<guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.mongabay.com/?p=193274</guid>

											<reporting-project>
							<![CDATA[Indonesian Palm Oil]]>
						</reporting-project>
					
											<locations>
							<![CDATA[Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Sumatra, and West Sumatra]]>
						</locations>
					
											<topic-tags>
							<![CDATA[Certification, Corporate Environmental Transgressors, Crime, Environment, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Rights, Land Conflict, Land Grabbing, Land Rights, Law Enforcement, Palm Oil, and Plantations]]>
						</topic-tags>
					
					
											<description>
							<![CDATA[On Jan. 1, 2017, the world’s largest association for ethical palm oil production came to a decision that, if implemented, will allow the Kapa community of West Sumatra, Indonesia, to retain control of their indigenous territory. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) found that Wilmar International had taken over Kapa lands without their consent. [&#8230;]]]>
						</description>
																					<content:encoded>
							<![CDATA[On Jan. 1, 2017, the world’s largest association for ethical palm oil production came to a decision that, if implemented, will allow the Kapa community of West Sumatra, Indonesia, to retain control of their indigenous territory. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) found that Wilmar International had taken over Kapa lands without their consent. Wilmar is a major processor and trader of the ubiquitous commodity, used in everything from ice cream to lipstick. The Singapore-headquartered firm also owns oil palm estates on Sumatra and Borneo islands, the source of most of the world’s palm oil — and where conflicts between agribusinesses and communities are rife. The Kapa community filed a complaint with the RSPO in October 2014, stating that Wilmar had established a plantation in their area in violation of both RSPO standards and Indonesian law. The Kapa also learned that Wilmar was seeking to get a Land Use Rights (HGU) permit in their territory, a move that if successful would have permanently erased their rights. The HGU effectively rounds off the permitting process for oil palm growers, allowing them to operate for 35 years. With the help of the Forest People’s Programme (FPP), a UK-based NGO, Wilmar initially agreed to explore alternative legal arrangements at a meeting with Kapa representatives in Kuala Lumpur alongside RSPO Complaints Panel staff. Despite this, Wilmar went ahead and obtained a HGU anyway. “A clearer violation of ‘free, prior and informed consent’ is hard to imagine,” said Marcus Colchester of the FPP, referring to&hellip;This article was originally published on <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2017/02/wilmar-grabbed-indigenous-lands-in-sumatra-rspo-finds/" data-wpel-link="internal">Mongabay</a>]]>
						</content:encoded>
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					<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
										<doi>https://doi.org/10.66709/news-193274</doi>				</item>
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