In southern Sumatra, a small team of forest rangers is racing to protect Batutegi forest, an important watershed and refuge for endangered wildlife such as tigers and slow lorises.Batutegi faces persistent pressures from forest encroachment and the need to balance conservation with local livelihoods.Experts say protecting Batutegi will require sustained collaboration with local communities, alongside long-term conservation and forest management efforts.
TANGGAMUS, Indonesia — For more than a decade and a half, forest ranger Wandi Harmoko has walked the ridges and valleys of Batutegi, a landscape in southern Sumatra. He is one of only a handful of officers tasked with patrolling almost 60,000-hectares (148,300 acres) of forest that is not only ecologically significant but also economically vital to Lampung province.
The forest Wandi protects today has been shaped by decades of disturbance. Since the turn of the century, waves of encroachment cleared large areas of forest to accelerate conversion to coffee plantations. Nevertheless, the forests here still harbors endangered wildlife, including Sumatran tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrae), siamang (Symphalangus syndactylus), pangolins (Manis javanica), Sumatran slow lorises (Nycticebus coucang) and sun bears (Helarctos malayanus).
