‘My motivation to be a part of the patrol team is to protect the proboscis monkeys in my village.’

Mangrove and peat swamp forests make up over half of the area of the West Bornean coastal village Mengkalang Jambu. This adds up to less than 3,000 ha, yet community-led SMART patrols record the majority of the proboscis monkey encounters across Kubu Raya district here. Over the past five years, four SMART patrol teams in the district travelled a total of 5,118 km, the equivalent of the distance between Dublin and New York. In the past, these monkeys were seen as pests in certain areas, but with numbers plummeting every year, they became a symbol of pride and diversity in the region.

Aurore MaxeyNovember 14, 2025Proboscis monkeys, bekantan, Wildlife protection, mangrove ecosystem, endangered species, Community-based conservation, women-led, women in conservation, Local Leadership, local stewardship, inclusive governance, community governance, Village-level regulation, Sustainable livelihoods, forest and fisheries management, sustainable livelihoodsComment

The Realities of Community-Led Conservation in Protecting Pangolins

Earlier this year, 109kg of pangolin scales were seized just south of the city of Pontianak by Kalimantan’s Environmental and Forestry Law Enforcement Agency (Gakkum) [Ref]. That represents 179 individual Sunda pangolins - if we go by Yang et al’s calculations [Ref] - poached from the wild and stripped of their scales for sale. This one seizure, in which 3 were arrested, follows a pattern of seizures, arrests, and prosecutions of pangolin traders in West Kalimantan over the last few years. In one of the largest cases from 2023, experts claimed up to 2000 pangolins could have been killed for the scales in just one seizure.

Aurore MaxeyNovember 12, 2024pangolins, wildlife, protection, illegal wildlife trade, Community-Led Initiatives, endangered species, smart patrol, poachingComment

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