Further Information
Volunteer with Indigenous Communities on Conservation Projects in Borneo

The community initiative was established to create sustainable and alternative sources of income for the local indigenous people of the four villages of the Batu Puteh Community in Lower Kinabatangan. Established in March 1997, the initiative was led by village youth from all four villages who volunteered their time to plan and establish community-owned ecotourism activities. Among other things the volunteers documented traditional indigenous knowledge and aural history and began detailed studies of the seven different types of rainforest that surround the community.

In 1998, volunteers spearheaded forest fire fighting in the nearby forests, saving orang-utans and allowing numerous other wildlife species to escape to safety. Since that time our partners have wholeheartedly adopted the second key objective to immediately intervene to restore degraded rainforest habitat and wetland ecosystems. By 1999 the group had secured funds to start forest habitat restoration, the work of which has been ongoing since that time. Then in 2000 the initiative started its first fledgling ecotourism activities based on a village home stay program which has been ongoing side-by-side with the direct conservation interventions since that time.

In 2003 the village tourism associations joined together to form a community cooperative which coordinates all the conservation activities and community ecotourism activities.