Sumatran and Javan Rhino

The Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders Indonesian Rhino Project adapted and changed over the course of the extended two-year project. Initially, our team set out to host a conservation workshop for local Indonesian government officials, known as Bupati, with jurisdictions surrounding the last Sumatran rhino habitats in Sumatra. At the end of 2019, through conversations with our project partner, International Rhino Foundation (IRF), it was determined that our efforts would be best suited to engage local communities surrounding Way Kambas National Park. This national park is home to some of the last remaining wild Sumatran rhinos and the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary (SRS), a facility currently housing a number of rhinos in an insurance population. The National Park and IRF staff have recently launched new collaborative efforts to restore rhino habitat and establish browse farms for feeding rhinos in the insurance population. Inov Sectionov, the Indonesian Program Coordinator for IRF, has been integral in connecting us to other partners and providing us with the specific information needed to move forward and succeed. This program model encourages local villagers to get involved with these efforts by providing economic incentives, including the opportunity to grow rhino browse seedlings in their own yard, to be harvested and purchased by SRS staff. Our team decided to gear our efforts towards promoting and encouraging more locals to participate in these programs, with the goal to see a 25% increase in new participants. This opportunity allowed the EWCL team to collaborate with members of the Sumatran Rhino Survival Alliance (SRS Alliance), working directly with IRF Executive Director, Nina Fascione, Deputy Director, CeCe Seiffert, and IRF Indonesian Program Coordinator, Inov Sectionov.

Our team explored the work IRF and the National Park staff are currently doing within local communities. Our Indonesian EWCL teammate, Indah Sartika Sari, initially traveled to attend a meeting with a Community Specialist of the National Park, Yanto, in the Fall of 2019. Since that meeting, he has been an essential contributor to our project. Currently, Yanto manages 30 farmers, each piloting new IRF/National Park habitat restoration programs, including seedling propagation for rhino browse & fruit tree community gardens. Additionally, IRF has ten families engaged in the pilot project to grow ficus browse for the SRS rhinos in their home gardens. 

We hoped to see a 25% increase in project participants through the development and implementation of an in-person community workshop and distribution of educational marketing materials. With the challenges COVID19 presented us, the workshop has been postponed, with the hope that it can be conducted in late 2021. The team has focused on developing the virtual and physical educational materials to support IRF’s Sumatran rhino efforts in the interim. To do this, we created print media in the form of flyers, pamphlets, stickers, and posters that will be strategically distributed across the target villages. Keeping in mind the cultural differences across the 40 villages surrounding Way Kambas, we developed a strategy for community conservation engagement, providing a variety of educational materials in a toolkit that will be provided to our project partner. Seven villages currently have active members in these projects, and we aim to increase community participation in the program. If proven successful with our target audience, some of these materials may also be shared or adapted for communities adjacent to a proposed secondary Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary site in Gunung Leuser National Park of northern Sumatra. 

Working with International Rhino Foundation and other partners, we have used existing video content from previous projects to create a short educational film about Sumatran rhinos. We intend to produce additional video content promoting rhino conservation and community participation in the IRF/National park habitat restoration and browse growing programs. In the future, we hope to send our filmmaker, Alex Goetz, to the SRS to capture new footage of the rhinos and the locals participating in the habitat and restoration efforts. These videos help define the conservation situation of Sumatran rhinos, illustrate the efforts to conserve the species through the breeding management at the SRS and highlight the community’s involvement in the efforts. They will also serve as a primary resource in the educational toolkit, creating pride for local people’s efforts to preserve and support their natural resources. The greater public will learn more about these recovery efforts and the critical work these villages are doing to conserve the rhinos. 

In addition, we developed an engaging personality quiz with the help of a web developer to “Find Your Inner Sumatran Rhino.” This fun and informative personality quiz will be integrated into IRF’s new website and will launch in 2021. The quiz will be used to promote the conservation of the species in the hopes quiz takers make an emotional connection and/or donation to support their rhino. We aim to drive higher traffic to the IRF website for the public to learn more about the work being done to protect and save the Sumatran Rhino.