Dear Friends

Greetings from FNPF

First of all we would like to thank those who still keep supporting us in this bad situation. We regret to inform you that we still cannot work as we would wish either at the park or at the village.

Our new volunteer vet Drh I Made Sugiarta arrived at Kumai on Saturday 12 October 2002. We hope he will be able to help improve our work.

Our overseas volunteers, the Safier Group from Belgium are still doing their research at the park and they are accompanied by some of our staff.

On September 07, 2002 we had a meeting that was arranged by a group of villagers who believe that they deserve to get land compensation. There will also be a meeting in early November 2002 which will be attended by all NGOs in Pangkalan Bun and also other parties who are willing to help Tanjung Puting with its problems.

The purpose of the November meeting is to form a kind of consortium to ensure all the NGOs will work synergistically and with better co-operation. We hope this consortium will tap into the good will of all parties. If nothing goes wrong I will attend this meeting along with our staff in Borneo.

Herewith our staff report for September 2002.

Once again thank you very much for your support.

Sincerely yours,

Drh I Gede Nyoman Bayu Wirayudha
Director of FNPF.

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Activities report by FNPF staff

Dear Friends

Herewith our activities that we could inform you for September 2002

Village work

As we could not do our work at the park anymore we are trying to do some work at the village. Unfortunately we are being stopped by a group of villagers who want to claim land compensation. They are Usup and his son Fadli and his son, H. Bekar and his son, Jais and his son, Saleh, Ijam and Satri who are now claiming to represent a new NGO in Pangkalan Bun. The meeting was also attended by Pak Rismansyah the village leader and Taufiq the village secretary. The meeting was held at Fadli's house not at the village office.

The conclusion from the meeting is that we are not welcome by them. Even though they said the reason why we are not welcome is because we never give any contribution to the village and they are not happy because one of our members stated a fact that there is a student who is unable to read, we believe it is more because we do not join in with their idea to get land compensation. The statement about the student who could not read keeps being raised by a person who appears unhappy with FNPF's existence at Tanjung Puting area. Even though the decision was made by only a few of the villagers as most of them were at their farms, the village leader has confirmed the decision as the villagers' decision.

We have reported the camp occupation to the police department and local government but so far they have not taken any significant action.

Before we were asked to move from the village we worked at the village school, prepared our natural dye Nursery Unit and at the same time kept maintaining our reforestation project. So far we have planted about 1600 Morinda citrifolia seeds and about 250 of it has grown. Because the villagers started to work at their farms again, some of us helped them with their farming while others assisted the Safier group to do their research.

Orangutan rehabilitation

As most of the trees nearby the place where we keep our babies are fruiting we could not train them there. Right now we are looking for the closest area to train them.

Adung the 3 years male is growing very well. He is now about 21 Kg and has more and more hair. He is growing much faster compared to Lady 4 years and 5 months female who is now about 20 Kg.

Butet our youngest 10 months male orangutan is fine now. Drh Agus Sugiono and Drh Herman Pasena continue to look after his health.

Illegal logging

When we visited the park area on September 27 we saw a boat pulling about 100 logs at the Sekonyer river.

Sincerely yours
All FNPF staff

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Activities report by Safier Group from Belgium

Report September 2002-10-01

As you know, FNPF had to leave the village TH on the 8 of September. To show the villagers that we completely support FNPF, we also went back to Kumai. At first we wanted to look for a new village, Sungai Cabang, but after a short visit, it was clear that this village doesn`t need our support. The villagers are mostly self-supporting, no one is working in the forest and a lot of programs are already going on. Sungai Cabang can survey as an example for TH. For this reason we decided to go back to TH at the 22nd of September. We asked the village that the FNPF staff could help us in the village as friends, not in the name of FNPF. But only pak Ledan was allowed to. By explaining them and setting up some small projects, we hope we can slowly convince the villagers FNPF really cares about the village and they need FNPF`s support.

The most important problem in the village is clear water. Too many children have bad skin diseases and there is no water available for cooking. In the dry season they usually use water from small wells for drinking and washing. After some tests we found out that the acidity of all the water in the village is below pH 5,2 and may be contaminated with mercury. We made a small clearing system using the water from the wells. With this system the pH can be raised to almost neutral. At this moment Els is trying to measure the mercury content in samples from the clearing system, the wells and the river. If the result from the clearing system is good, we want to make a clearing system for all the villagers who want to use it Also the rainwater is too acid for drinking (pH: 5.3-5.5). We already made a small system to raise the pH of this water, so during the rainy season it is sure they can use drinking water. If we have gathered all the results of these systems we will ask the villagers how they want to contribute to the clear water in the village because they will have to maintain it. We can only help by offering the systems and the material to maintain it.

Further on we did a survey about the fishponds. From all the Red Tillavial FNPF offered to the village only three are left. But 6 days ago, a villager noticed fingerlings from the three Red Tillavial and put them aside in a small box in his fishpond. Hopefully they will survive. The main problems with the fishponds are birds and other fishes chasing the small fishes, and snakes entering the fishponds from small holes in the ground.

We also want to set up a co-operation with the villagers who want to sell handicrafts. We already spoke to a few of them and they were pleased to try it again. In this way handicrafts can be sold to other countries and can be looked for ways to reach the tourists visiting TPNP.

We really want to thank FNPF a lot for all the help and we will try very hard to convince the people in TH they really need the help of FNPF. By the time we have to go back to Belgium, FNPF has to be back in the village again. An Windelinckx also wants to thank FNPF a lot for the opportunity to volunteer in TH. She will send her report about the water purification as soon as it is finished.

Sincerely yours,

Bart Van Asten
Els Coolen
An Windelinckx