Protected Areas with Coastal and Marine Implications:
Biodiversity Kalimantan - Indonesia

There are seven national parks, numerous reserves and other types of protected areas in Kalimantan. These include:

Gunung Palung National Park, with an area of 300,000 ha, ranges from the coast to 1160 m. Consequently, it has a wide range of habitats, comprising Peat Swamp Forest, Montane Forest, Lowland Rainforest and freshwater. The beaches of Datok Island are a tourism center. It has for many years been the focus of a Harvard University protected area management program that has focused on encouraging reduced impact logging, exploring markets for high quality added value timber and establishing a managed forest area that is capable of generating funding to support conservation measures throughout the Park. In the last four years, this Park has been subject to intensive illegal logging, encroachment, hunting and removal of non-timber forest products. These intrusive activities have severely damaged the conservation value of the Park and the current research programs there.

Tanjung Puting National Park is a coastal site that does not rise more than 100 m above sea level. It has freshwater habitats, Heath Forests, Mangrove Forests and Peat Swamp Forests. It has been the focus of a 19-year intensive research program to study the ecology of the orangutan and associated primates in the Park and the effect of fire on the vegetation and the orangutan. In 1999, encroachment on the Park from neighboring villagers and migrants resulted in direct conflicts with researchers in the Park, and their research centers were vandalized. Illegal logging and hunting continues unabated. The wild fires of the 1990s burnt large areas of the fringes of the peat swamps.
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