SUPPORTING
COMMUNITIES
The Leuser Ecosystem plays a crucial role in sustaining millions of people.
By working together, we can protect livelihoods and wildlife.
COMMUNITY SUPPPORT.
The forest edge communities we work in and near, along the Leuser Ecosystem, experience poverty and live in very basic conditions. Most rely on oil palm or rubber for income, supplemented with subsistence farming, livestock, cash crops and other activities, some of which are harmful to wildlife.
Through community outreach each month, our team has formed positive relationships with the communities and their leaders, providing support wherever we can.
This has included:
-
Providing employment to locals, some of whom were poachers and loggers prior to becoming rangers for Sumatran Ranger Project, transitioning them to wildlife protection practices while maintaining their livelihood.
-
Providing fruit trees and fencing for a school
-
Sending school supplies after learning locals set snares to help pay for school equipment
-
Building 14+ predator-proof livestock corrals to reduce livestock predation.
-
Starting a seedling program to provide fruit trees to communities asking for help to move away from oil palm, and eventually we hope to grow species that can be used for regeneration of forest in degraded areas. In the first 9 months of the program we germinated over 4200 seedlings.
-
Constructing a community bathroom in the village of Sumber Waras, to enable kids to bath safely without fear of encountering wild elephants far from home.
-
Donating noise deterrents to landowners to provide them with a low-conflict means to deter crop raiding wildlife immediately.
-
Reconstructing a kindergarten that was flood damaged
-
Providing mobile phones to growers and farmers living alongside the National Park, enabling locals to call our team to help mitigate human-wildlife conflict, reducing retaliatory harm to wildlife after conflict events.
-
Supporting communities through the Days for Girls program - transporting and donating (on behalf of) re-usable feminine hygiene kits to women and girls to help keep them in work and school and ensure less waste ends up in waterways.
-
Collaborating with MODIBODI to provide reusable period underwear which require significantly fewer resources to make, and last, distributing to remote communities.
-
Offering temporary employment to locals of communities we work with for large projects. We now employ a total of 15 staff from a number of forest-edge communities.
-
Constructing an elephant field hut for a landowner, to help with the early detection of Sumatran elephants and prevent them coming into communities.
COMMUNITY
EDUCATION.
The Sumatran Ranger Project supports local education initiatives in North Sumatra wherever possible.
Conservation is most effective when local communities are engaged and empowered. By supporting education, we can foster a generation of local environmentalists who understand the value of protecting the Leuser Ecosystem and are equipped to take part in its long-term care. When children (and by extension their families) learn about wildlife, ecosystems, and sustainable practices, they’re more likely to protect it.
Our work is not just to protect the wildlife of the forest — we are also invested in the wellbeing of the people and communities that live along the forest edge. Many people rely on the forest, and by supporting schools and education, we can strengthen community relationships, and support wildlife-friendly livelihoods.
Our work has included:
-
Funding SOBAN (a school developed by Gunung Leuser National Park ranger Jhon, to provide free conservation and English lessons for children in his community of Bohorok), for 12 months, and providing a laptop, projector, and school supplies. Founder Jhon originally funded the teachers' salaries himself.
-
Partering with Seaworld and Busch Gardens Conservation Fund, to fund 100 local kids per month, for 12 months, to go into the forest to support their classroom learning. Because of the National Park entrance fee most children who live on the edge of the forest can't afford to go in and have never seen an orangutan. Some adults too! We are working to change that.
-
Funding botanical interpretation signs within the Gunung Leuser National Park to further support not only the children's learning but local guides and tourists as well.
-
Supporting a school in Batu Rongring, with the provision and planting of 50 fruit trees and a perimeter fence to keep livestock out, as well as providing school supplies.
-
Supporting a primary school in the village of Gelugur, where villagers say they set snares to help pay for school supplies like shoes, bags and books, to provide an alternative means of obtaining supplies and protect wildlife.
