The Last Rain Forest

If we could all fight for truth and justice without leaving the house, traveling to foreign countries would be unnecessary. If a logical argument always prevailed, Skype would be all that was needed to communicate. If we all shared the same values, I would not have gone to Jakarta on behalf of Orangutan Foundation International (OFI) to save one of the last remaining forests where we can release our wild ex-captive orangutans. The place is called Rimba Raya, which means “Great Jungle.”

Rimba Raya is a narrow 500 square kilometer strip of land located between a national park and a river. Much of it is composed of deep peat swamp rain forest. Or it used to be. Some has been cut down, despite Indonesia’s laws prohibiting the destruction of carbon-rich deep peat– the product of thousands of years of accumulation at the mind-numbingly slow rate of 0.07 inches per year. Although it is illegal to convert land containing peat over three meters thick to agricultural uses, much of Rimba Raya was slated to be converted to palm oil production. Then, in 2008, an American company approached OFI’s President, Dr. Biruté Galdikas, with a plan to convert Rimba Raya to an “Ecological Restoration Concession” (ERC). The ERC could protect the land for up to 60 years and generate enough income to protect it through the sale of carbon credits.

At first, it looked like things were going well. The project had passed two of the three necessary stages of approval and was simply waiting for a usage map to be issued by the forestry department. But the map was not forthcoming. For a long time, we thought the project was simply stuck. Eventually, we learned the real reason. The provincial government and the forestry department had succumbed to pressure from the palm oil companies. Much of the land has now been allocated to palm oil development.

Is it too late to turn things around? That’s what Dr. Galdikas wanted to find out when I flew out to meet her in Jakarta on August 20th. Every day that week, we battled Jakarta’s traffic on our way to meetings with NGOs, officials, and ex-officials. First, we sought to understand. What happened? Who was behind it? Were we accomplishing anything in these shabby conference rooms, speaking with people who smiled and nodded and quietly stuffed cash envelopes in their briefcases? Was our land irretrievably lost in this sea of smiles and pleasant chitchat?

As the week progressed, our hopes began to fade. One night, we took a taxi out to the elegant home of a former forestry minister. He sat us down in comfortable chairs on the patio where he receives guests. It was a typical Indonesian night–warm and humid. A cute little country rat scuttled among the potted plants. Much nicer than the greasy Norwegian wharf rats we encountered in Jakarta. Children played outside. His wife was praying at the mosque.

“Is there anything we can do?” we asked. “After all, these palm oil concessions are totally illegal!”

He fed us cake and smiled at us. “No, of course you can’t do anything.”

“But what about the 40 orangutans we are waiting to release and whom we can no longer afford to feed?”

He smiled even more. “You should just release them anyway,” he said. “Plenty of time to get permission later.”

At the end of the week, we flew to Pangkalan Bun, in Borneo, where 330 hungry orangutans were waiting for us. Our first stop was an ATM, where Dr. Galdikas, the OFI intern and I each withdrew the maximum allowed. Our next stop was a pickup truck by the side of the road filled with durian fruit and cempedak, Indonesian fruits that smell like gorgonzola cheese. We bought the whole truckload. We then handed them out to hungry orangutans at every place we visited.

During the two days I spent in Borneo, I finally got to see Rawa Kuno, a different forest that OFI is attempting to purchase outright. It is beautiful beyond description. I can only repeat Dr. Galdikas’ words. “It’s like the original Garden of Eden. And the orangutans are our innocent cousins who never left.”

They took photos of me standing next to a 300 year-old rain forest tree with huge buttresses. The farmer who owns the land, Pak Kuku, was there with us, along with a reporter from Vanity Fair. The reporter asked him, “You cut down many of the large trees in this forest. Why didn’t you take this one? Were there spirits in the tree?”

“I felt sorry for the tree,” came back the translation. “And besides, I had to have at least one large tree to show Dr. Galdikas.”

On the way to Rawa Kuno, we saw miles and miles of scrubland, burned land, tree stumps, and the occasional Zirconium mine. Welcome to Indonesia. Where some of the most beautiful forests on the planet are going, going, gone.

For a video of Rawa Kuno, and to pick out your own parcel of land for purchase, please visit http://www.orangutan.org/how-to-help/rawakuno/rawa-kuno-legacy-forest