A member of conservation NGO HUTAN’s reforestation team carrying native tree seedlings to a replanting site—formerly an oil palm-growing area—in the Lower Kinabatangan area, Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. HUTAN works with local communities to protect wildlife and manage human-wildlife interactions in the Kinabatangan—a heavily degraded and fragmented river basin that is also home to 800-1000 orangutans. The reforestation programme aims to create forest linkages in heavily anthropogenic (human-modified) landscapes to increase food sources and allow wildlife to move freely between forest patches and larger forest areas. Planting seedlings is only the first step of a long, demanding process of more-than-human care and collaboration. Planting sites must first be manually tended and regularly weeded by the team to promote the survival of seedlings. As more species enter and use the area, they effectively become nonhuman collaborators that help to introduce, disseminate and fertilise seeds and aid the establishment of the forest corridor.
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Collaboration and Contestation
