Bukit Barisan Biodiversity Conservation Project
Sumatra, Indonesia
Reviving Bukit Barisan's rainforest.
The goal of this project is to conserve and restore the hill and montane rainforests of the Bukit Barisan Mountain Range in the central Sumatran volcanic highlands and increase the capability of indigenous communities to sustainable manage their ancestral environment. The project supports village forest management groups and creates new social and communication linkages between indigenous forest dependent communities and some of the world’s most valuable national parks and protected forest areas to create a series of buffer zones.
Conserving habitats and empowering communities.
The project seeks to slow or halt habitat loss to promote biodiversity conservation and maintain forest carbon stocks. The project strategy involves establishing strong community-based conservation organizations and activities to protect intact forest habitat, while assisting communities to develop climate sustainable and economically productive agroforestry systems under a long-term landscape management plan.
Initiated in 2023, the project supports indigenous communities located in six different upper watersheds on the periphery of national parks and protected forests. The villages are located along a 400 km. section of the Bukit Barisan Mountains. The communities are strategically situated on farm and agroforestry land on the edge of the frontier forests or primary rainforest in the upper reaches of major rivers.
Protecting forests from commercial exploitation.
Rapid forest loss downstream from coal mining, palm oil plantation expansion and other industrial activities require the establishment of the community forest buffer zone to prevent further inroads into the primary forest. The communities’ rights to manage their forests are recognized by the Government of Indonesia under the national social forestry program.
