The Rimba Raya Biodiversity Reserve REDD Project

at the Wana Sawit oil palm plantation ruptured. This damagedthe aquatic ecosystem threatening endangered freshwater fishspecies and polluting the water resource on which local peopledepend. In May 2003, Wana Sawit planted oil palm on up to 380hectares of once-­‐forested land inside the park’s border. In June2004, a series of roads up to 10km long were discovered leadingfrom this area further into the park, facilitating illegal logging andextensive degradation of the protected forests.In 2004 NGOs uncovered plans by three other plantationcompanies to expand their operations. Examination and satelliteanalysis of these plans revealed that over 17,000 hectares of parkland, nearly all of the supposed ‘buffer zone’ along the Easternborder, would be lost if the proposed expansion took place.Without the Rimba Raya project, this expansion of palm oilplantations encroaching the park would undoubtedly proceedaccording to plan.Under the most likely ‘without project’ scenario, severe negativeimpacts on biodiversity in the project zone can be expected.Under this scenario, the vast majority of the Project Area isconverted to oil palm. Such a large expansion of oil palm wouldlead to remaining forests being heavily exploited and very few, ifany, natural forests remaining. As has been experienced in otherareas in Kalimantan and Southeast Asia, this scenario would likelyisolate patches of remaining forest, eliminating existingconnectivity with the national park and between remnantpatches of forest. Such a large-­‐scale conversion to oil palmwould leave very limited habitat for threatened species, andwould lead to their local extinction. Only a small percentage ofnative wildlife can persist in such an environment, able to live in(e.g. mice, rats, pangolin), use, or pass through (e.g. pigs anddeer) oil palm plantations. Seed banks of threatened plantswould also be lost through such large-­‐scale conversion tomonoculture.Even a less severe (though less likely) ‘without project’ scenario,under which a smaller portion of the Project Area is converted tooil palm (it is unforeseeable that none of it would) and theremaining land left to current land use patterns, would proveharmful to biodiversity. Under this scenario, some landscapeconnectivity would remain, albeit through secondary anddegraded forests as they continue to be exploited for timber andgrow increasingly susceptible to fire through human disturbance.Fire, through anthropogenic causes, has had a strong influenceon the landscape in the Tanjung Puting National Park. Thispattern of human-­‐induced fire has also occurred in the ProjectZone, and is likely to increase with a rise in disturbed forests andhuman presence, both of which will occur without the RimbaRaya project. Although this scenario is preferable to the moresevere ‘without project’ scenario, allowing for greater levels ofbiodiversity to persist, it is still far from optimal as there is aguaranteed reduction in biodiversity, especially to threatened,forest-­‐dependent species and large-­‐bodied mammal species.125