Looking back into a past of chaos, corruption and crime, Indonesia has clearly come a long way in reforming its timber sector. During the 1990s and early 2000s, illegal logging was so widespread that more than 70-80 per cent of timber produced in Indonesia was sourced illegally
Founded in 1984, we first began working to protect forests in the mid-1990s, through advocating a global forests convention. By the late 1990s it became clear a more direct approach was needed to curb tropical deforestation, we changed tack and began documenting illegal logging in a vital Indonesia orangutan habitat
Late one night travelling with work, I had a fit of jet lag and registered for the Brighton Marathon. Ludicrously, I'd only started running a few weeks before, so it gave me a goal (an ambitious one) and anyway, it seemed ages away.
The last time I saw Hapsoro was when we met in the Forest Watch office in Bogor and talked of plans for the future. Since then, and right up until the day he died, plans were being made. When I opened my emails on that terrible day there was a message from him, excited and confirming the next steps for our plans
EIA Visuals Specialist Paul Redman, Nanang Sujana, two campaign staff and I travelled to the forest community of Muara Tae, in East Kalimantan, East Borneo, to run workshops in research techniques, photography, film, GPS tracking and security
We had spent two days walking through lush, verdant forest – the last ancestral forests of Muara Tae. The close, varied greens teeming with life could not have stood in greater contrast to the landscape that now stood in front of us. A monochrome, muddy yellow broken only by piles of dead, drying vegetation.