Ecoregional Assessment of Biological Diversity in East Kalimantan

East Kalimantan Ecoregional Assessment: Executive Summary
forests, upper montane and cloud forests, and major rivers and lakes. Data sources for the
assessment included LandSat imagery, published inventories of species and studies of
ecological systems, local government spatial plans and resource management plans, expert
interviews, local community workshops and in-house expertise for some of the ecological
systems covered here.
Goals for conservation targets were established by considering the relative rarity and
distribution of the forest types across the planning area and the island of Borneo as a whole.
Additionally, goals were based upon the naturally occurring patch sizes of the respective
community types as well as the Conservancy’s desire to secure multiple examples of the
geographic variability of targets from north to south and east to west across the planning
area.
Results
The recommended portfolio of 33 landscape-scale sites encompasses approximately 33%
of the province and about 9% of the island of Borneo. Nine (9) of the proposed sites,
encompassing over 30% of the portfolio area, are already largely contained (greater than
75% of the site) within designated national parks or forest reserves. An additional 13
portfolio sites, encompassing another 21.7% of spatial area of the Portfolio, are located on
hutan lindung or restricted forest areas. The remaining sites are comprised mostly of unique
occurrences of forest and geological types or combinations of them, and most likely also
contain unique assemblages of the outstanding biological diversity inhabiting this part of the
island of Borneo.
Despite the relatively high percentage (52%) of co-location of our proposed portfolio sites
with designated (often referred to as “gazetted”) protected or restricted areas – in Indonesia
at this time, that tends to mean very little in terms of actual conservation protection. Illegal
logging is rampant throughout the national parks as are unapproved human settlements and
farming. Leases for heavily damaging coal mines are routinely given out by the district and
provincial governments within national parks and forest preserves. And, since the advent of
decentralization of government responsibility to the district level, there is little opportunity or
appetite to change the status quo at these local levels. But these challenges do not mean
all is lost, by any means.
Strategies
There are innovative relationships being forged even now by TNC conservation staff with
the multi-national logging companies and oil and gas industries. With the forces of
international conservation pressure bearing down on these companies affecting the
economic viability of their enterprise, they have realized an incentive to work cooperatively
with constructive, solution-oriented environmental groups like TNC. Logging concessions in
particular are highly motivated to get the most for their wood products, and are working with
the Forest Industry, TNC, and other conservation groups like Smartwood and WWF to
develop certification standards that will essentially declare their products “environmentally
sound”, thereby presumably fetching higher prices or more receptive outlets in overseas
world markets.
It is hoped that, with the constructive engagement of these multi-national companies
controlling vast expanses of the landscape in East Kalimantan, we will be able to impede, if
not outright eliminate, the unequal competition of the illegal harvesters of wood and other
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