In the heart of Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, Kristen Morrow joined on-the-ground efforts to help support primate populations and learn from local communities. Morrow is a PhD candidate at the UGA Department of Anthropology, whose research examines the importance of unprotected, secondary forests for local livelihoods and primate conservation. With support from Universitas Gadjah Mada and from the Borneo Nature Foundation, her research takes place in the Pulang Pisau regency of Central Kalimantan, where the forests are key to community livelihoods, and primates adapt to changing landscapes. As Morrow conducted her research, she incorporated participatory mapping by engaging with local communities, ethnographic research methods, and tools for bioacoustic monitoring. This allowed her to understand how wildfires, national forest management policies, and shifts in global markets influence land use and primate presence through time, and to examine how ongoing efforts to establish Community Forests are shaping these processes. Morrow works with residents of the Kahayan Tengah subdistrict to map changes in primate presence over time. Her findings painted a complex picture. Influenced by external factors and unpredictable wildfires in dry years, lands used by communities for subsistence have become more localized, especially as mining emerged as a primary livelihood. Corresponding to these changes, people report declines in most primate populations, particularly the proboscis monkeys. In contrast, the highly threatened orangutans and gibbons continue to persist throughout these forests. Hunting continues to threaten all primates in the area, especially red langurs. Perhaps the most extreme threat is the emergence of industrial oil palm, which clears forested lands relied upon by both people and primates. In Morrow’s study area, nearly all communities hope to preserve their forest and prevent development of new oil palm plantations. Field technician Andri travels the canals of an industrial oil palm plantation that has been cleared but not yet planted. Morrow with Indonesian field manager and Universitas Gadjah Mada Master’s student Ari Ningtyas. The potential of Community Forest initiatives indicates that supporting local communities in land management may help preserve forest areas and mitigate the declining primate populations. Still, these efforts are constrained by a lack of funding, structural support, and policies that limit how people may utilize Community Forests. Morrow and field technicians from Tahawa Village celebrate successful installation of acoustic recorders to monitor for primate presence in their Community Forest. Morrow works with undergraduate students at Universitas Gadah Mada during a training workshop on conservation bioacoustics. The bioacoustic data on primate presence that Morrow and collaborators collected is being used to contribute to a regional sound library, which can help guide conservation efforts and support conservation education and outreach projects. Moving forward, Morrow hopes her research findings will help bolster Community Forests and other Social Forestry initiatives in ways that support local communities. Morrow would like to acknowledge her funders: the UGA Graduate School, UGA Department of Anthropology, and UGA’s Center for Integrative Conservation Research. My external funders include the Fulbright Hays Dissertation Research Abroad Program, the Lisa K. Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at Cornell University, the IDEA Wild grant program, and the American Indonesian Exchange Foundation.
