DAMARAN BARU, Indonesia (AP) — In a lush jungle at the foot of a volcano in Indonesia’s Aceh province, the song of gibbons in the trees mingles with the laughter of the seven rangers walking beneath them. An hour into their patrol, the rangers discover another mammal in the forest with them.
“Where are you going? What are you doing?” they ask kindly to a man walking past with agricultural tools in hand. “Just remember, don’t cut down trees wherever you go, okay?”
The friendly engagement is just one tactic the women-led ranger group has used to protect the forest their village depends on from deforestation and poaching. After years of patrols saw a sharp decline in deforestation, the rangers are now sharing their strategies with other women-led groups striving to protect their forests across Indonesia.
A vast tropical archipelago straddling the equator, Indonesia is home to the world’s third largest rainforest, with a variety of endangered animals and plants, including orangutans, elephants and giant forest flowers. Some don’t live anywhere else.
Since 1950, more than 740,000 square kilometers of Indonesian rainforest – an area twice the size of Germany – has been felled, burned or demolished for the development of palm oil, paper and rubber plantations, nickel mining and other raw materials. to Global Forest Watch. During the past years deforestation has slowedbut continues.
In Damaran Baru, which borders one of the richest expanses of tropical rainforests in Southeast Asia, many villagers depend on the forest for their livelihood. Farmers harvest coffee from bushes on the mountain slopes and the water flowing from the mountainside provides water for drinking and cooking in the village.
But unregulated deforestation due to irresponsible agricultural practices and misuse of forest resources have led to disastrous consequencessays villager Sumini, who, like many Indonesians, uses only one name.
In 2015, heavy rains caused flash flooding in the village, forcing hundreds of people to evacuate. When the water receded, Sumini went to the forest and saw that the village’s tree-filled watershed had been illegally logged.
“I looked at it and thought, ‘This is the cause of the landslides and the disaster,’” Sumini said in an interview.
Her next thought prompted the creation of the female-led patrol: “What do we want to do as women? Should we remain silent? Or can we not be involved?”
Indonesia has rangers in its national parks and a patchwork of guard groups elsewhere, including some indigenous groups. But Sumini’s idea was new.
After lobbying women in the village to start a patrol, Sumini faced a backlash in the traditionally patriarchal province governed under Islamic law known as Sharia. But after convincing village leaders and husbands of interested women – and also allowing men to accompany them on the patrol – Sumini was given permission to form the group.
Sumini began working with the Forest, Nature and Environment Aceh Foundation to legally register the patrol group with a social forestry permit – a formalized, government-backed permission that allows local communities to manage their forests.
After the permit was processed, the foundation began teaching future foresters standardized forest conservation methods, said Farwiza Farhan, president of the foundation. The first training, she said, was learning to read maps and other standardized forestry methods, such as recognizing wildlife markers and using GPS.
“The way outsiders navigate the forest is very different from how local communities do it. They know it, but it’s not necessarily translated into a standardized language that we use, like maps and GPS,” Farhan said. “Finding and creating that space where we speak the same language when we talk about the forest was crucial.”
In January 2020, the group had their first official patrol. Since then, their monthly treks through the jungle have included mapping and monitoring tree cover, cataloging endemic plants and working with farmers to replant trees. They periodically measure individual trees and mark their locations, marking them with ribbons warning against their felling. When they encounter someone in the forest, they remind him of the importance of the jungle to his village and give him seeds to plant.
Sumini says the calm tactics the women use, rather than abrupt confrontation, have been effective in getting people to change their ways. They carry no weapons, apart from the large knives they use to cut their way through the forest when necessary, but they had little fear for their own safety. Violence in the jungle is virtually unheard of, and rangers usually outnumber those they encounter. The women do not have the power to arrest people, but they can report them to the authorities.
Even before the forest patrols began, some women in the group were already practicing their soft diplomacy at home.
For years, 50-year-old Muhammad Saleh set fire to parts of the forest, hunting for tigers that he could kill and sell to help feed his family. The then raging civil war had damaged the local economy, and each tiger would fetch him about $1,250. Other days he cut down trees for firewood or caught birds to sell at the market.
His wife, Rosita, 44, begged him not to go. She reminded him of the animals that would be affected by his actions.
It took years, but eventually Saleh felt his wife’s message. He stopped poaching and cutting down trees and started going on patrols through the forest with his wife. He said he has seen the improvement since he started patrolling: the forest has more birds and the tree cover is denser.
“Our forest is no longer deforested: the animals are awake and we are even more awake,” he said. “The whole world feels the impact, not just us.”
Now the rangers’ methods are being adopted elsewhere in Indonesia, as local organizations, non-governmental organizations and international foundations help bring together other women-led forestry groups.
Members of the Aceh group met with women from provinces across Indonesia heavily affected by deforestation, shared information about leading local forestry programs, taught people how to participate in wilderness mapping, how to draft proposals and apply for forest management permits and how to better enforce enforcement against illegal poaching, mining and logging.
“There is now more connectivity between mothers, grandmothers and women talking about how to deal with problems and how to be environmental champions,” says Farhan.
Women’s participation in forest management is crucial to the success of social forestry programs, says Rahpriyanto Alam Surya Putra, program director of the Asia Foundation for Environmental Management in Indonesia, who has helped organize meetings between the women-led groups.
A survey of 1,865 households conducted by the foundation found that when women are involved in community forest management, it leads to higher household income and more sustainable forest management.
But women-led forest management still faces challenges in Indonesia, he admits. Some traditionally patriarchal communities do not understand the benefits of women’s participation. And even when women are empowered to participate in forestry, they are still expected to take care of household chores and children.
But Damaran Baru’s female rangers say the positive impact they have already had has motivated them to continue their work for future generations.
“I invite other mothers to teach their children and the community about the forest, just as we have done… we want them to protect it,” she said. “Because if the forests stay green, the people stay prosperous.”
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