Check out our new film to find out what we've been up to in Harapan Rainforest thanks to your support, why we're working to protect it for wildlife and local communities, and what we're hoping to do next. There's interviews with people working on the ground and footage of what's being done to help learn more about  this amazing place and restore it to its former glory.

You can find the film here. Enjoy…

We know that the animals and birds in Harapan Rainforest are important for moving seeds around the forest. Hornbills fly for miles across the forest canopy, taking with them the seeds of fruit they have eaten. We want to find out which animals and birds eat what types of seed. This will help us as we restore the forest. If we plant species that have fruit they are keen to eat, it will attract more wildlife into the planted…

Three of Harapan Rainforest’s forestry team and five staff from Sarolangun district forestry service recently went to Harapan Rainforest’s western border with Taman Bandung village, to conduct a boundary survey. They found good quality forest with a high density of trees and very good canopy still intact. But that wasn’t their best discovery! Late in the afternoon, they came across many footprints (and piles of dung!…

Fifteen members of the Green Generation, a group of young nature lovers from various high schools in Jambi, recently spent New Year's Eve in Harapan Rainforest. As they normally live in a city of half a million people, they camped out in the forest, to make sure they experienced the forest close up, and could learn about the importance of forests and how Harapan Rainforest is being restored. During their five-day stay…

A really noticeable development at the Harapan Rainforest main camp has been the growth of our central nursery. Lines of metal poles support enough shade netting to cover half a football pitch. Fully equipped with an irrigation network, the rehabilitated nursery is big enough to hold up to half a million seedlings at a time.  The shade netting protects the youngest shoots from the ravages of the hot tropical sun and the…

When we, and our local partners, took over the management of Harapan Rainforest three years ago, we immediately started training a team of forest wardens to protect the forest from further illegal logging. Working with our partners - Birdlife International and Burung Indonesia - we also came up with a recovery plan to restore these areas back to their former glory.
With help from more than 200 local community members…

We have just completed our first Malayan Sun Bear research project, funded by the International Bear Association. The sun bear is the smallest bear in the world and one of the globally threatened mammals found in Harapan Rainforest. It gets its name from the golden disc of fur on its chest. Its name in Indonesia is beruang, meaning "having money", comparing the disc to a golden coin. This has been an exciting project…

It was a very proud day for me recently as I presented the indigenous Bathin Sembilan children who attend our mobile school with uniforms. The school has been running for nearly a year and was set up to give the indigenous children in and around Harapan Rainforest the opportunity to get an education; which otherwise they would not get. In April our mobile school received the attention of the District Education Office…

The normally quiet Harapan Rainforest recently became a hive of activity when over 400 school children arrived in camp to assist in a day of tree planting. They came from eight different schools in the local area and also included the indigenous children who are taught through our mobile schools. The idea behind the project is to create a green community with a better understanding of the environment and the importance…

The pangolin is a strange looking mammal; scaly, with a prehensile tail, and claws for opening termite mounds. I never thought I’d see one of these secretive animals in the wild.

I got my first encounter last week in sad circumstances, and not just one but 40 of them! The governement wildlife agency, BKSDA, had siezed a shipment of pangolins, and asked whether they could be released into Harapan Rainforest…

We are currently holding discussions with one of the indigenous community groups living within Harapan Rainforest, at a place called Simpang Macan (Tiger Junction).

This group of 27 families is based at Simpang Macan, but moves into the forest in search of fruit, rattan, fish and game from time-to-time throughout the year. They already have their own system of forest protection laws and sanctions that forbid activities…

I’ve arrived into camp after a break to see some building work - an office and 11 new rooms to house staff. This is welcome as we are now in desperate need of more office space and accommodation.

The new buildings are traditional in design; wooden with very tall metal roofs to keep the inside cool. They are an example of recycling at its best - originally built in the city of Palembang over 40 years ago, they have…

It’s dawn. The frogs fall silent while gibbons tell everybody about their territories and the sunrise. The night-shift is over and the day-shift begins.

I have now been at Harapan Rainforest for more than a month as Senior Technical Adviser, bringing the experience gained in 12 years of conservation work in Indonesia.     

Most of my career has been managing pristine habitats protected from clearance, like national…

It is a big relief to be at the end of the rainy season. Following a long dry season when our fire fighting teams were on high alert, we have experienced long periods of extremely heavy rain which brought a different challenge. Travel to and from, and within, Harapan Rainforest has become increasingly difficult, with roads and bridges being completely washed away or developing deep pot holes, some larger than the vehicles…

One of the most amazing things about working in a tropical forest is the ever-present thrill of what I might encounter next. On our last field trip, myself and our six research assistants woke up just before dawn to the unmistakable, deep resonating growl of a tiger, less than 200m from our tents. It was a little unnerving as it seemed to be circling us, but we knew it was just letting us know that we were in its territory…

We were recently visited by a local indigenous community member with the exciting news that a hornbill nest had been found. This is part of a scheme that pays local community members for providing information on hornbill nests so we can then monitor their breeding behaviour.

Thanks to Pak Ajer we were taken to a nest tree that turned out to contain a female Bushy-crested Hornbill  Anorrhinus galeritus and at least one…

Camera trap images are often of large charismatic mammals, but during the last 14 months of camera trapping surveys we have come to realise the value of this equipment for collecting information on birds too, specifically the galliformes or ‘gamebirds’. So far we have recorded the globally-threatened Crestless Fireback Lophura erythropthalma, the near threatened Great Argus Argusianus argus and Crested…

More than sixty members of our nearest Pramuka troupe recently visited Harapan Rainforest. Pramuka is the Indonesian scouting movement. They got to experience rainforest close up on the forest trail – where there are regular sightings of hornbills (including two of the nestboxes erected for them), giant squirrels, leaf monkeys, and the sounds of bearded pigs snuffling and grunting in the undergrowth. They also enjoyed…

Harapan Rainforest is located on fairly flat land, which means we have few vantage points for viewing the site. To address this, our trained climbing team and representatives from Indonesian climbing organisation IndoRope are installing five viewing platforms this month, at the dizzying height of nearly 30 metres above the forest floor, with more planned for next month. These platforms are important for helping our fire…

Despite the long dry season we are experiencing in Sumatra, a few hours of rain can have a dramatic affect on the forest landscape, as I discovered on the research team's latest forest trip. 

On one of our first nights, very heavy rain left many of our survey transects impassable the next day, with small streams having risen by up to two metres in some cases. Our eight transects are chosen before the trip and are…

Working with local communities and collaborating with local partners is key to Harapan Rainforest’s success. A film just released by a project partner, Jambi NGO KKI-WARSI, shows some of the activities that have been going on in villages around Harapan Rainforest over the past 3 years or so.

Follow this link to view the film on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFLq-K9pdAE

The complete film is about 15…

Deep in the forest, I woke at 4.30 in the morning to walk to our gibbon survey points under the cover of darkness, itself an exhilarating experience. 

Arriving at the survey spot, I prepared for a morning of recording calling gibbons. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of bright colour in the first morning light and turned quickly to see what is always a wonderful forest sight: a pitta! In this case, the near…