Kayan Mentarang Nature Reserve

The Kayan Mentarang Nature Reserve is far in the interior of northern East Kalimantan bordering on the East Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak. It covers 1.4 million hectares and is the largest protected block of rainforest in Borneo. The reserve i s an important refuge for numerous species, many of them endemic.

The Kayan Mentarang area is inhabited by several thousand Dayak people, about half of whom are shifting cultivators and the other half irrigated rice farmers. Most of them also depend on hunting, fishing and gathering wild plants for their subsistence. So me collect commercial forest products such as rattan.

In recent years, commercial logging as well as intensive extraction of other commercial forest products have accelerated in Kelimantan. These activities, along with large-scale road-building, are threatening the ecological balance of the reserve and the sustainability of forest resource use.

WWF's Indonesia Programme has been active in Kayan Mentarang since 1990. Its conservation management work addresses the needs, problems and potential of the people living in and near the reserve. A focal issue is the determination of commonly agreed-upon boundaries and zones through community mapping and inventories of land and forest resources. This innovative work has proven invaluable to efforts to formally establish legal land tenure and resource use rights for local traditional communities.

Other WWF activities include research on traditional medicines and knowledge of medicinal plants. Its innovative "Culture and Conservation" programme seeks to understand local cultures, language and beliefs as a key element in the management plan which WW F is preparing in anticipation of declaration of the proposed Kayan Mentarang National Park.


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