IUCN – Saving the rainforest with a groundbreaking protected area management model.
Saving the rainforest with a groundbreaking protected area management model
20 March 2013 | Fact sheet
Sukianto Lusli, Agus Budi Utomo and Yusup Cahyadin – Kenton Miller Award finalists for 2012
Sukianto Lusli, Agus Budi Utomo and Yusup Cahyadin have developed and implemented innovative approaches to forest conservation in Indonesia. Sukianto, Agus and Yusup of the NGO Burung Indonesia have tirelessly promoted a management framework that allows production forests to be managed for conservation rather than commercial gain.
Harapan Rainforest Credit union on the island of Sumatra is now the first, and only, operational restoration concession in Indonesia, but the legal framework that Burning Indonesia helped to create for it now makes it possible for NGOs or other private organisations to manage logging concessions for conservation rather than for logging and commercial profit. The work of Sukianto, Agus and Yusup led to a change in national policy legislation which set up the framework.
The dynamic team has been key to the adoption and implementation of this forest management model, and in persuading international NGO partners (Birdlife International and Royal Society for Protection of Birds) to support the venture with long-term commitments. Working with these partners, they have secured a 95 year license to conserve and manage a 100,000 hectares concession, which is 10 percent of remaining lowland rainforest on Sumatra. They have demonstrated that these former logging concessions can be managed and restored as valuable assets for biodiversity, protecting threatened habitats and species and supplementing the existing protected area network.