The Leuser Ecosystem in Sumatra, Indonesia, is a place of rich biodiversity where you can find elephants, rhinos, tigers and orangutans living in the wild. As such many NGOs are contributing to efforts to protect the precious forests and ecosystems of Leuser from new plantation development and are holding Golden Agri-Resources, Musim Mas and Wilmar responsible for destroying lowland rainforests in Leuser. In order to help protect this unique ecosystem, we have been working with our members and fellow civil society organisations to better understand the specific challenges that need to be overcome in order to achieve long term protection of the Leuser Ecosystem. Through this work, 31 plantation companies have been identified whose concessions overlap to some extent with the Ecosystem. Of these companies, 24 are locally owned and 7 are associated with larger parent company groups. These companies’ concessions include approximately 125,000 hectares of land within the Ecosystem boundary which are generally located on land allocated for non-forest uses. Analysis of these concessions inside the Leuser Ecosystem, indicates that as of August 2015 over 30,000 hectares of peat land and over 35,000 hectares of and covered with forest within these concessions have yet to be cleared or planted with Palm Oil. From January to August 2015, the amount of natural forest conversion for oil palm expansion observed within the Leuser Ecosystem was found to be over 3,900 hectares and eleven cases of encroachment into protected forestland were identified. However, these new land clearance areas were generally found to be outside peatland areas.

Find out more about what TFT is doing in Leuser by reading the full report