Tesso Nilo National Park

Tesso Nilo National Park, Riau Province

The Tesso Nilo forest in Riau Province is one of Sumatra’s last havens for elephants and tigers. With over 4,000 plant species recorded so far and over 200 plant species found per 200-square-meter plot, Tesso Nilo has one the highest level of vascular plant known to science, with many species yet to be discovered.
Only two decades ago, the forest covered half a million hectares. Today, less than 150,000 hectares remain. Of that, just 38,576 hectares is protected as national park. WWF is calling the government to expand the park to provide viable habitats for Sumatran elephant and tiger. In August 2008, the provincial government of Riau, regency government of Palawan and the Ministry of Forestry agreed to expand the national park  to 100.000 hectares.

Since 2005, chain-of-custody monitoring by WWF indicates that illegal logging activities to supply the pulp and paper industry appear to have stopped in this forest. However forest encroachment on a massive scale has replaced this activity, with widespread illegal establishment of settlements and smallholder palm oil plantations. More than 25,000 hectares of forest has been lost to illegal settlements and encroachment, in most cases using the logging corridors built by the pulp industry.  See more on Tesso Nilo here

Flying Squad Elephant Patrol

WWF is running a successful human-elephant conflict mitigation operation called Flying Squad at one site on the border of Tesso Nilo National Park and has been able to convince three companies to adopt its approach. Ready to move out at the shortest notice and drive wild elephants back into the national park, the Flying Squad brings short-term relief to the intense conflict between local communities and wild Sumatran elephants by preventing them to feed on crops and plantations grown in the villages. See more on WWF's Flying Squad and Sumatran Elephant.

Tiger Conservation Unit

In Riau, WWF is collaborating with the Riau Forestry Department, using camera traps to help conduct presence/absence surveys that will provide a range map for tigers in Sumatra's lowland rainforest. The cameras will also help provide a density estimate of tigers in various habitat types and determine whether there are adequate prey species for tigers to subsist. The results could have significant implications for species and forest preservation in Indonesia and around the world. 

Tesso Nilo community forum

In Sumatra's Tesso Nilo National Park, WWF has helped to create a community forum, which directly involves local communities in the management of the park. The forum, known as "Yayasan Taman Nasional Tesso Nilo", represents 22 villages around the Tesso Nilo reserve. It aims to develop new and sustainable ways to derive economic benefit from the forest, anticipate and moderate conflicts, as well as to improve conservation awareness among the local population. This has included support of ecotourism and production of honey from the forest. The forum is also behind the famous Tesso Nilo Flying Squads, teams of elephants and drivers trained to drive wild elephants away from farms and back into the forest, minimizing human-elephant conflict around the park.

Eyes on the Forest

This partnership between WWF's Tesso Nilo program and local environmental groups Jikalahari ("Forest Rescue Network Riau") and Walhi Riau ("Friends of the Earth Indonesia") was launched in 2004 to investigate the state of forest conservation in the Indonesian state of Riau. It serves as a clearinghouse for information, and as a tool for local, national and international NGOs, companies, governments and any other stakeholders who want to take action to conserve forests and protect the rights of local people who rely on them.