Rebecca has been working at FFI since September 2007. Though she studied conservation in her BA and MSc, she decided that the life in the jungle just wasn't for her. Having grown up in New York City, she has experienced more pigeons and squirrels than parrots and spider monkeys. So she decided to write about the impact that FFI's projects have on the ground.
Her current role as Communications Officer (Business & Biodiversity) has allowed her to focus her energy towards FFI's innovative Business & Biodiversity Programme. Rebecca helps to get the message out about FFI's strategic corporate partnerships and what they have helped to achieve for global biodiversity.
In 2007 FFI discovered two previously unknown orang-utan populations, in the western foothills of the Schwaner Mountain Range and coastal peat swamp forests of Sungai Putri, Western Kalimantan in Indonesia.
Both these critically important areas are facing destruction by pending conversion to oil palm plantations.
The BBC’s Wildlife Fund has granted FFI £40,000 towards helping effectively protect orang-utans in these two important areas.
The aim of the project is for conservation through improved, collaborative law enforcement, improved protected area management, and improved spatial planning to reduce conversion to oil palm and through development of sustainable forest management for orang-utan habitat under timber concession licences.
FFI is now collaborating with the district government in these two areas to identify critical orang-utan habitat and to secure these forests through re-zoning as protection forests.
We are also collaborating with the Ministry of Forestry to develop Sungai Putri as a pilot site for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) through carbon financing mechanisms.
FFI has been implementing successful conservation projects in Indonesia since 1996, focusing on law enforcement, community livelihoods, and protected area management.
Tune in for the BBC Two’s ‘Wild night in’ TV progamme on Sunday June 20th.
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