By Adam Miller | Executive Director
Our core model still is laser-focused on advancing the rights of rural communities through community-led conservation approaches. However, a few years ago we saw the need to create programs that helped create the enabling environment for this to thrive.
With deforestation, wildlife trade, and exploitation of natural resources still threatening livelihoods and undermining community efforts to protect natural resources in Borneo, we recognized a need for policy, advocacy, and law enforcement work to combat environmental crime ex-situ. Law enforcement efforts to date too often focus on low-income community members in rural areas. These individuals often take the highest risk and receive the lowest return while wealthy kingpins who exploit human rights and threaten national security capitalize on corruption and weak regulatory frameworks. By addressing these issues we can accelerate our ability to create a thriving, enabling environment for community-led conservation solutions.
We are finding more and more birds that are smuggled illegally on a daily basis to cater for the pet trade, driven by bird singing competitions in Java and now across Indonesia. When wild birds need immediate assistance, we plan to tackle the symptoms of the Illegal Wildlife Trade through our new Songbird Rescue and Rehabilitation Center led by our Wak Gatak branch.
Our center will be the first songbird rescue center in Kalimantan. Soon we will be able to rescue, rehabilitate, and release many endangered bird species back into their natural habitats, and act as leaders in this hub for learning and skills development for songbird conservation. From our years of building trust and community-led conservation in our partner villages where poaching and deforestation have decreased, the birds we release will have a much better chance of survival when released into their natural habitats.
With incessant rain, flooding, permitting, and working delays due to pandemic lockdowns we have experienced setbacks and challenges in its construction. But with the team working hard, the center is set to open in early 2022. We need your help to complete the first block of aviaries that will allow us to become operational in terms of receiving, treating, and rehabilitating incoming songbirds.
Watch our short video to meet the team on the ground rescuing songbirds and learn more about how this program works in unison with community-led conservation projects.
Yayasan Planet Indonesia is the parent organization for Wak Gatak, which is the ex-situ branch of our organization. The goal of our ex-situ branch is to ‘reduce the impacts of wildlife trafficking on biodiversity and the biocultural dimensions of society’. Together both Planet Indonesia’s community-led in-situ programs and Wak Gatak’s ex-situ programs are aimed at holistically addressing and reversing the negative impacts of biodiversity loss on West Kalimantan’s forests.
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