The Rimba Raya Biodiversity Reserve REDD Project

habitat in terms of canopy and food source, whereas otherindustrial estates such as palm oil are not. Particularly whencombined with fruit crops, they can provide a sustainable incomefor local communities as well as a dependable supplemental foodsource for orangutan populations (purchased by InfiniteEARTHand OFI from a community cooperative).According to a joint CIFOR/USAID report titled “Tree Planting inIndonesia: Trends, Impacts and Directions”, Helping Dayaksmallholders to improve their traditional rubber growingpractices has been one method of increasing their incomes,thereby securing their economic welfare and politicalindependence. Specifically targeting adoption by smallholders,the Rubber Association of Indonesia (GAPKINDO), theInternational Centre for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF), theIndonesian Rubber Research Institute and the Centre forCooperative International Agronomic Research for Development(CIRAD) are cooperating on a Smallholder Rubber AgroforestryProject (SRAP). The purpose is to develop means forincorporating improved planting materials into smallholders.The "jungle rubber" system is a low-­‐input agroforestry system inwhich rubber competes with the regrowth of the natural forest.The system is inexpensive and requires little labor to establishand maintain. SRAP organizers accept that jungle rubber gardenshave a number of advantages. The mixtures of crops growntogether with rubber provide a diverse income consistent withsmallholder labor capacity. The gardens are also environmentallybenign; they protect soil fertility, prevent erosion and have arelatively high level of biodiversity (Sivanadyan and Norhayati1992; ICRAF 1994). The purpose of the SRAP is to leave thetraditional rubber gardens essentially as they are, but increasetheir productivity by adding jungle rubber trees with improvedplanting material. The key to the ongoing research effort is toidentify a variety of higher-­‐yielding rubber that will grow in theheavily shaded, highly competitive and minimally tended junglegarden.One very important aspect of the “jungle rubber” system is that itcreates a very fast growing forest canopy, which facilitatesorangutan migration across vast areas of forest in pursuit ofseasonally fruiting trees. One of the biggest risks for theremaining orangutan populations is the fact that the forests inIndonesia have been highly fragmented. Depite the existence ofpristine islands of primary forest, orangutans cannot survive onthese islands due to the sporadic fruiting of native trees.Orangutans spend their lives traversing large expanses of forestsin search of fruiting trees and when that forest canopy is brokenand their mobility constrained as it is in Kalimantan, their verysurvival is challenged, even in the absence of all other risks.Reconnecting these islands of primary forest by creatingsuperhighways of high canopy plantation forests (rubber)intermingled with natural species and fruit plantations isessential to the survival and long-­‐term growth of the residentorangutan poplulations within the Rimba Raya Reserve and theTanjung Puting National Park. The collateral community benefitsof this program are explained in more detail in the “CommunityAgro-­‐Forestry” section below.130