Borneo’s Rainforest is one of the oldest in the world, and home to an incredible array of flora and fauna, much of it endangered. Many of the thousands of varieties of plants and trees, and hundreds of species of birds and animals are not found anywhere else in the world.

The 600,000 hectare Sebangau National Park in Indonesian Borneo is one of Borneo’s most important areas of rainforest. It supports globally-significant populations of endangered species, including the Bornean orangutan and the whitebearded gibbon, and the peatlands can reach depths of 15m, making Sebangau National Park one of the largest terrestrial carbon stores in the world.

However, these fragile ecosystems are under threat from several different fronts. Illegal logging, conversion of the forests to farm palm oil, and the effects of climate change, are not only destroying the unique habitat on the island but also drying out the peat soils and making them prone to wildfires.

Professor Frank Van Veen is a Professor of Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter, who works extensively in Borneo. He says: “I went to Borneo in 2016, in the aftermath of the 2015 fires. It’s hard to imagine but these fires can burn under ground and go on for months across vast areas with more and more rainforest being lost. The smoke exposure affects the health of millions of people and the carbon emissions in a few months can be more than what the entire UK economy emits in a whole year.

“The fires are now a near annual event so our work focuses on two main areas – restoring drained and deforested peatlands, and improving local fire-fighting capacity and fire-prevention networks. It is essential that we work in partnership with local communities because people need to make a living. We can’t just come in from outside and impose changes on them.”

One recent initiative in partnership with the Borneo Nature Foundation (BNF), is supporting community groups to replant a significant area of deforested land. The groups are trained to be nursery managers, growing seedlings and maintaining them until they have grown enough to be purchased by the BNF for replanting. This way the community gain additional income and are involved in all stages of the reforestation process.

Integral to this are women’s collectives, who use local materials to produce the organic pots in which the seedlings are grown and planted. This not only negates the need for plastic pots, but it also gives the women an opportunity to earn an independent income.

The community nurseries we helped establish in two villages will help to produce thousands of seedlings each year as part of the ‘One Million Trees’ project, which aims to plant a million trees in stages over five years in the burned peat swamp forest area of Sebangau National Park. The success and experience gained from them is now leading to plans to roll out this initiative to further villages.

The other aspect of restoring the forest – rewetting the peatlands – also heavily involves local communities as this process often involves damming canals which were originally dug to transport logs from the forest.

Frank says: “Although these canals are not natural, they have often been there for a long time and local people use them to move around the forest. They can also provide locations for fishing, and so people can be worried about the consequences of filling them in.

“We do a lot of research on use of the canals and agree with the local communities which to leave open, while still being able to dam the majority with local consent. We also study the impact of canal damming on fish populations to ensure that any adverse effects can be detected and addressed. It’s a long process with many groups to work with but ultimately we’ve had a positive response to the different aspects of our work. More and more people are taking ownership of the conservation effort.”

Building on the work around Sebangau National Park, an ambitious new research programme has been started focussing on supporting Indonesian efforts to restore a huge deforested area, known as the ex-Mega Rice Project, that is at the epicentre of the recurring peatland fires. This programme involves social scientists, biologists, geographers and climate scientists working in close collaboration in the UK and Indonesia. Until recently the programme was well-funded through the UKRI’s Global Challenges Research Fund, but severe cuts to foreign aid has left much uncertainty about funding in coming years.

However, Frank remains optimistic about the future. He says: “In the 1990s when the precursor to the Borneo Nature Foundation was founded, none of the forest was set up. It was their work in partnership with others which led to Sebangau National Park gaining this status in 2004. There are still huge swathes of unprotected forest, home to significant populations of orangutans and other species and I believe it is possible to save much of it.

“If we can continue the progress we are making I hope that in 15 years I will look back and see that we improved people’s lives. That the ecosystems are healthier, the fires are fewer, and that people are able to live sustainably with the forest rather than having to resort to destructive practices to make a living.”