Safaris - Wildlife - Kalimantan - Borneo (Indonesia)

Borneo is a very large island in Southeast Asia’s Malay Archipelago and is shared by the Malaysian states Sabah and Sarawak, Indonesian Kalimantan and the tiny nation of Brunei. It’s known for its beaches and ancient, biodiverse rainforest, home to wildlife including orangutans and clouded leopards.

The indonesia dark side is large areas of forest in Indonesia have been cleared by large multinational pulp or logging companies, and replaced by plantations. Forests are often burned by farmers and plantation owners. Logging and the burning of forests to clear land for cultivation has made Indonesia the world's third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, behind China and the United States. Forest fires often destroy high capacity carbon sinks, including old-growth rainforest and peatlands.  Today, Indonesia had surpassed the rate of deforestation in Brazil, and become the fastest forest clearing nation in the world. And with the forests, biodiversity and wildlife also disappeared.

For instance, we have been to Tanjung Puting National Park and despite being a protected national park, approximately 65% of the park's primary forest is degraded. It is the loss of natural habitat that is the greatest threat to the wildlife, and wildlife isn't abundant along the river and the orang-utans are mostly seen at the feeding stations where you can see them very closed as they are half-wild animals and familiar to humans.

In Tanjung NP, we confirm that the forest along the river is exclusively secondary and sparse, explaining a poor wildife but it still attracts herds of tourists coming easily by boat from Kumai.