Dear friends,
On the southern slope of Mount Murud Kecil, a logging road is creeping into clouded leopard habitat and forests rich with Rhizanthes lowii: one of the rarest flowering plants on earth. Logging company Borneoland Timber is steadily advancing towards the native customary territories of the Kenyah and Penan communities of the Upper Baram. We’ve just returned from Sarawak, where four villages are urgently mobilizing to stop them.
New logging trails are pushing towards Long Semiyang village’s protected forest and dangerously close to the watershed of the nearby Jamok communities. We met with these villages, and they are ready to act, but they need forest monitoring equipment now: boat engines to reach logging areas, drones to monitor activity, laptops to analyze the data, and Starlink to connect with nearby communities. They want to document and report encroachment, and be ready to act when it happens. Three more villages have already reached out asking to join the coordinated response. Communities want to act collectively, and the momentum is undeniable.
These are the same forests where we conducted the Baram Heritage Survey. We know they harbor dozens of rare, threatened, and endangered species, and some yet to be formally described by science. They deserve protection, and so do the people who have lived among them for generations.
When Samling threatened these forests, we stood with communities and we kicked the loggers out. The threat has returned with a new face: Borneoland Timber. But communities are more organized than ever, and so are we. Now is our chance to make history again: to stand up for Indigenous rights and safeguard these forests for good.
The forests of the Upper Baram are irreplaceable, and so is this moment. We have a $40,000 matching grant on the table — but we need to raise $80,000 to get our emergency response teams up and running before the logging progresses any further. Every dollar you give right now will be doubled. Please act today.
With your donation, you can put state of the art tech directly in the hands of communities who are ready to act, right now. Every drone that goes up, every encroachment that gets reported, every new road that is stopped in its tracks gives Kenyah and Penan communities a fighting chance to safeguard these extraordinary forests. Please give what you can — the communities are ready, and they need you now.
With gratitude and in solidarity,
The Borneo Project Team