On the Ground in Ujung Kulon: Community based activities

Where conservation and sustainable lifestyles meet

WWF is encouraging local communities to participate in protecting the National Park by promoting activities which generate alternative sources of income.

Inclusive design
These activities seek to design a strategy to physically defend the area, stabilize land use, generate wealth and transfer it directly to the local people. The work follows the informal and formal structures of the villages and in the future will expand to include fishermen, whose role is presently not emphasized.

Pinor's mission
Pinor, WWF's Awareness Officer for the WWF Ujung Kulon project, acts as an effective bridge between people and their surrounding natural environment. It's not difficult to see why. He is direct and straightforward, and uses these traits to approach local people and explain the importance of a healthy and functioning natural environment.

Pinor is also visionary; he would like the project to expand to the whole of Banten province, which covers approximately 865,100 hectares (about seven times the size of Ujung Kulon National Park).

Objectives of community-based activities
To create better living conditions for communities in the buffer zone and stabilize land use in the area through:

• developing income-generating activities such as running guest houses, handicraft work, and small-scale production and gathering of honey, seaweed, vegetables and fish;
• implementing agroforestry activities such as tree-planting on idle land and improvement of agriculture (to be started with a demonstration plot); and
• developing environmental education awareness activities.