Reduction of encroachment in Kerinci Seblat National Park around Mount Kerinci

This project is to take place in Kerinci-Seblat National Park in Kerinci District, Sumatra, Indonesia. The park was declared in 1996, and in 2004 added to the World Heritage Areas of UNESCO, and covers about 1,390M hectares in the provinces of West Sumatra, Jambi, Bengkulu, and South Sumatra. The main threats for the park include illegal logging, hunting, encroachment, road construction, and extraction of non-timber forest products. According to Flora and Fauna International in 2006, over 1,000 ha of the park on the foothills of Mount Kerinci have been converted into agricultural land. Since 2002 illegal land clearing is taking place. The park management has not been able to effectively address encroachment, and no sanctions have been put in place. Also, there is a lack of communication, cooperation, and planning between villages, park management, and local government. Finally, the community members expose a lack of understanding of the ecological importance of the park. The main economic activity of villagers is commercial farming (potatoes, cabbage, carrots) including for export purposes. People involved in encroachment are not always poor, or may be paid by other farmers. Although people claim that encroachment takes place as survival mechanism, they also admit that an important driver is competition to claim the land first, facilitated by the lack of prevention or control by park authorities and government. In April 2007, encroachment from the focal villages mentioned below had reached within 300 m from the park gate at Guard post 10, in full view of people using the gate including tourists. The purpose of this project is to address ongoing encroachment from three villages in the Mount Kerinci area as well as to prevent future encroachment, and the development of mechanisms to restore recently cleared forest. The villages concerned are Pelompek in Gunung Tujuh sub-district, and Kersik Tuo and Giri Mulio of Kayu Aro sub-district. Activities include: Mapping all the encroached areas (combining all data sources) and discussing and disseminating the results to encroachers, local government, local people’s representative, media and park authorities; communicating and lobbying stakeholders (park authority, local people, local people representative, government, ministry of forestry and other related institution) to enter negotiations; facilitate meetings to develop the MoU; consulting intensively with the encroachers to develop detailed procedure and spatial planning to resolve the problem; facilitating encroachers and the park authority to implement the MoU and the detailed spatial planning.