Traveling to ‘one of the most remote places in the world’
Oct 13th, 2011 by wwftravel
Gerholdt on a rainy day during her trip to Borneo.
Jennifer Gerholdt has been working as a Program Officer in WWF’s Global Forest & Trade Network (GFTN) for more than three and a half years, helping to save the world’s remaining natural forests. But it wasn’t until this July that she had the opportunity to visit one first-hand.
Gerholdt, along with members of the GFTN team in Indonesia, traveled to East Kalimantan in Borneo, Indonesia to evaluate the operations of the forest company PT Adimitra Lestari. GFTN will be working with Adimitra to help improve its management policies and practices with the ultimate goal of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification. FSC is an independent, third-party certification that WWF considers to be the most credible.
To date, nearly half of the Earth’s original forests have been lost; 10 percent of all forests have disappeared in only the last 25 years. GFTN works to eliminate illegal and unsustainable logging and drive improvements in the world’s most valuable and threatened forests by partnering with companies committed to responsible forestry and trade. GFTN is working with almost 300 companies in more than 30 countries throughout the supply chain, from forest managers like Adimitra to retailers like Williams-Sonoma, Inc. in North America.
Getting to “one of the most remote places in the world”, as Gerholdt describes it, where Adimitra operates, was no small feat. Though her trip took 12 days, she spent just two days on the ground. The rest of the time she was traveling via multiple planes and boats. When Gerholdt finally arrived, she was not disappointed. “I was in awe,” she said. “It’s one thing to hear about how amazing a place is from other people, and it’s another to see it for yourself.”
Though Adimitra owns only about 123,000 acres, a relatively small area by WWF standards, GFTN wants to work with the company in part because it is critical habitat for a pygmy elephant population. The species is considered endangered, with as few as 1,000 individuals found in the wild.
Gerholdt and the GFTN-Indonesia team identified opportunities for Adimitra to improve its operations, including creating a tree harvesting plan, gravelling the logging roads to prevent further erosion, establishing a waste management system for disposing of materials such as used vehicle parts and oil, and stemming the encroachment of palm oil plantations.
“Adimitra has a lot of work ahead of them, just like all companies starting out in their responsible forestry and trade journey,” Gerholdt says. “The incredible value of the GFTN program is its ability to work with companies like them to make important changes. And having the chance to visit one of the forests we are trying to protect was an inspiring reminder of the importance of what we do.”
Join WWF’s tour Into the Heart of Borneo, June 12 – 28, 2012.
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