April, 2026
Establish Multi-Stakeholder Working Groups
Challenge
Conserving forests and species across a large, multi-use landscape dominated by industrial concessions is difficult. Conservation strategies will not succeed if all main landscape actors in Mendawak are not committed.
Solution
We establish Working Groups that act as neutral forums where different landscape stakeholders can come together. Creating safe, secure spaces is particularly key in concession-dominated areas because rural villagers are often sidelined or lack the means to equitably engage with concession companies. As the government is the ultimate authority in all land-use decisions in Indonesia and should be involved in strategies from the beginning, we endeavour to have all our Working Groups facilitated by the relevant government body.
Progress
Corridor Working Group
In 2025, Sangga Bumi Lestari established the Corridor Working Group. The goal of the Corridor Working Group is to develop and conserve a 99,875 hectares forest corridor in Mendawak’s eastern portion that overlaps two oil palm concessions, four pulp and paper concessions, four Village Forests (Hutan Desa) that have received permits through the government’s social forestry (perhutanan sosial) policy, and five unprotected village forests. The Corridor Working Group is facilitated by the West Kalimantan Nature Resources Conservation Centre (Balai Konservasi Sumber Daya Alam / BKSDA), the government body that has authority over wildlife and wildlife habitat. The Corridor Working Group provides the framework for all stakeholders important for the development and preservation of the forest corridor to meet, discuss openly and ultimately develop forest co-management agreements.
Small Cat Working Group
In 2025, Sangga Bumi Lestari formed the West Kalimantan Small Cat Working Group together with the BKSDA. The group was formed after Sangga Bumi Lestari detected four of West Kalimantan’s small cat species in the Bentarum landscape of West Kalimantan: the Sunda leopard cat (Prionailurus javanensis), Sunda clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi), flat-headed cat (Prionailurus planiceps), and the marbled cat (Pardofelis marmorata). Only the elusive Bay cat (Catopuma badia) has not been observed.
The presence of these cats, particularly the rare flat-headed cat, led to Sangga Bumi Lestari developing targeted conservation strategies that we are implementing in Bentarum. It became clear during discussions with the government that there was a dearth of information about small cats in the province, with little information about their distribution, key habitat areas, or projects that were being implemented to aid their conservation.
Mendawak should be key habitat for small cats as all five species have been observed within Gunung Palung National Park. Extrapolation of data by habitat type suggests the wider Mendawak landscape and particularly our forest corridor might host significant small cat populations. The West Kalimantan Small Cat Working Group has three immediate aims:
- Raising Awareness: Many stakeholders in potential small cat habitat still lack understanding of wild cat species and their conservation status. Educational materials such as infographics, posters, or webinars will be developed
- Data Consolidation: Existing records on wild cat presence remain scattered. The BKSDA is formally requesting information from concession companies about small cat distribution within their concession areas, and Sangga Bumi is building an information dashboard to map small cat distribution.
- Cross-Sector Collaboration: The collection of data will lead to the development of multi-stakeholder agreements in key areas and the eventual drafting of a strategic plan for small cat conservation for West Kalimantan.
Community Development Working Group
There are several issues in Mendawak that impede community development, including unintegrated land-use planning, lack of infrastructure, insufficient capital, and lack of access to extension services. These in turn impede effective conservation, because villagers do not have the capacity to become involved in forest-positive initiatives or the means to move away from practices that harm the environment.
To encourage the development of community development programmes, collaboration between landscape stakeholders and learning between villagers in different areas, we have established a Community Development Working Group. The Community Development Working Group focuses on two villages outside of the Mendawak Biodiversity Corridor, Sumber Agung and Kubu villages in the district of Kubu Raya and Bagan Asam village in the district of Sanggau. As of April 2026, the Working Group has functioned as a space for coordination and joint planning between villagers, leading to the development of complementary strategies to enhance coconut farming in Kubu and Sumber Agung and an agreement to trial hydroponic farming in Sumber Agung and Bagan Asam.