Qualla: Betung Kerihun National Park

Betung Kerihun National Park: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sabar Minsyah, CC BY-SA 4.0. Twenty-four park rangers. Eight hundred thousand hectares. The math alone tells you something about Betung Kerihun National Park: this is a place where the forest still outnumbers the people who patrol it. Sprawling across the mountainous spine of western Borneo, the park occupies the headwaters of the Kapuas River in Indonesia's West Kalimantan province, a landscape so rugged that more than half its terrain tilts at slopes exceeding forty-five percent. It is one of the largest protected areas on an island famous for its vanishing wilderness, and it guards some of Borneo's most intact rainforest ecosystems at a time when the island has lost more than half its original forest cover.

Image: Sabar Minsyah | CC BY-SA 4.0

Betung Kerihun National Park: Eight Forests, One Mountain Wall

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sabar Minsyah, CC BY-SA 4.0. From the swampy lowlands at 150 meters to the wind-scoured summit of Mount Kerihun at 1,790 meters, the park stacks eight distinct forest types along its altitude gradient. Towering dipterocarps dominate the lowland canopy, their buttress roots spreading wide across the thin trop...

Image: Sabar Minsyah | CC BY-SA 4.0

Betung Kerihun National Park: The Primates Who Remain

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sekot'ngk, CC BY-SA 4.0. Betung Kerihun shelters the critically endangered Bornean orangutan alongside seven other primate species, from the acrobatic Mueller's Bornean gibbon to the tiny, wide-eyed Horsfield's tarsier. But protection on paper has not translated into safety on the ground. WWF data from 2...

Image: Sekot'ngk | CC BY-SA 4.0

Betung Kerihun National Park: The People of the Headwaters

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sadalmelik, CC BY-SA 3.0. Long before anyone drew park boundaries, Dayak communities lived along these rivers. Groups including the Iban, Tamambaloh, Kantu, Kayan Mendalam, and Punan Hovongan have inhabited the upper Kapuas watershed for centuries, practicing shifting cultivation and harvesting rattan, re...

Image: Sadalmelik | CC BY-SA 3.0

Betung Kerihun National Park: A Border Without a Fence

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sabar Minsyah, CC BY-SA 4.0. Betung Kerihun shares its northern boundary with Malaysia's Lanjak Entimau Wildlife Sanctuary, a 2,000-square-kilometer reserve that creates a combined protected area spanning the international border. Together, the two reserves have been proposed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site ...

Image: Sabar Minsyah | CC BY-SA 4.0