Jakarta, Indonesia – A natural forest concession succeed in developing integrated plan for production and endangered species conservation management, especially orangutan, through sustainable forest management scheme approach. There is already the official sustainable forest management certificate grant from Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) to PT. Suka Jaya Makmur, a concession located in Ketapang, West Kalimantan. FSC certificate is given to forestry companies worldwide that have high commitment in doing their business by paying attentions to ecological, production and social aspects. PT Suka Jaya Makmur concession which cover 171,340 hectare, it is believed to be important habitat for around 600 – 700 orangutan individual under Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii subspecies.

This is the first one in Indonesia where a natural forest concession is succeed in integrating natural utilization and sustainability aspects on its production forest management plan, for orangutan conservation. This showed that sustainable forest production is not an easy thing to do, especially to support biodiversity conservation efforts outside protection area.

Since 2009, WWF Indonesia through Global Forest and Trade Network (GFTN) Indonesia and Species program started to work with PT. SJM in developing company?s management plan to create harmonization between operational/ production and conservation of orangutan population inside the concession. This partnership has been in line with the FSC certificate that required conservation and sustainable management of relevant concession. In this partnership, WWF facilitated survey on orangutan nests, food trees as well as daily orangutan activity range. The result from this survey was integrate in company?s timber production management plan and adopted in company?s policy, for example, in PT SJM standard operational procedures.

The partnership with natural forest managers is the significant and strategic element for biodiversity conservation in Indonesia that need to be supported and developed.

Yes, we have to realize that talking about environment is not only about individual action. The partnership above has proved that we can encourage more environment values if we combine our abilities. So, let's build the partnership together and do better for our environment!

© WWF-Indonesia/Irza Rinaldi