This 2009 article reported the launch of an effort to restore the Harapan Rainforest of Indonesia.
REVITALIZATION readers familiar with the outcome of this project are invited use the Comments section below to share their insights.
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Forest ecosystem restoration on the scale of the Harapan Rainforest (indonesia) restoration has never been done before, so it will require the development of new techniques and approaches.
The first rule of forest restoration is to prevent further degradation and our initial efforts have been focused around this. Whilst this remains an ongoing battle, our progress to date allows us to now turn our attention to practical restoration.
In developing our forest restoration strategy for Harapan Rainforest we are very fortunate in having help and guidance from one of our project partners, the Forest Restoration and Research Unit (FORRU) at Chiang Mai University, Thailand.
FORRU has many years experience in the restoration of degraded habitats and have quite literally “written the book” on “How to Plant a Forest“. We have already translated this book into Indonesian and are now adapting FORRU’s framework species approach to our particular conditions.
At a macro level we have been using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), satellite imagery and ground-truthing to identify and classify the different forest areas within Harapan Rainforest based on habitat cover and species composition. This will be used to identify which forest areas are suitable for specific forest restoration approaches.
Photo of endangered Trilobite Beetle of the Harapan Rainforest courtesy harapanrainforest.org
See original 2009 article.