Qualla: Samboja Lestari: Planting a Forest from Scratch

Samboja Lestari: Planting a Forest from Scratch: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Midori, CC BY 3.0. The compost recipe alone should give you pause: sawdust, fruit scraps from orangutan cages, chicken and cattle manure scavenged from across Kalimantan, and a microbial agent brewed from sugar and cow urine. Willie Smits spread this mixture across 2,000 hectares of clay soil so depleted that underground coal seams regularly ignited in the dry season. Forestry experts told him that once primary rainforest is cut and burned, it takes centuries to return. Smits, a microbiologist with a doctoral thesis on fungal root symbiosis, suspected they were thinking about it wrong. In 2001, the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation began buying up this ruined land near Samboja, in East Kalimantan, and started planting. They called the project Samboja Lestari -- roughly, the everlasting conservation of Samboja. It was an audacious name for a place where nothing grew but grass.

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Image: Midori | CC BY 3.0

Samboja Lestari: Planting a Forest from Scratch: Seeds from Unlikely Places

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frank Vincentz, CC BY-SA 3.0. The land that BOS Foundation purchased was, by any reasonable assessment, hopeless. The soil was predominantly clay riddled with hard plinthite clods. Beneath the surface lay coal seams that combusted spontaneously when exposed to dry air. Land prices were rising, and there was n...

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Image: Frank Vincentz | CC BY-SA 3.0

Samboja Lestari: Planting a Forest from Scratch: Orangutans Go to School

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Momo Regar, CC BY-SA 4.0. Reforestation was never the only goal. Samboja Lestari is, at its core, an orangutan rescue and rehabilitation center, and the growing forest serves a purpose beyond carbon sequestration and biodiversity. Orphaned and confiscated Bornean orangutans -- seized from the illegal pet ...

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Image: Momo Regar | CC BY-SA 4.0

Samboja Lestari: Planting a Forest from Scratch: Bears, Birds, and a Changing Sky

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit consigliere ivan from Bontang, Indonesia, CC0. The recovering forest has attracted more than orangutans. At the Indonesian government's request, Samboja Lestari became home to over 70 sun bears confiscated from the illegal pet trade or rescued from cleared land. Hornbills returned. Thirty species of reptiles were recorded, al...

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Image: consigliere ivan from Bontang, Indonesia | CC0

Samboja Lestari: Planting a Forest from Scratch: The Cost of Growing Back

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alex Kaltim, CC BY-SA 4.0. Samboja Lestari is controversial, and its critics raise legitimate questions. Replanting a forest is dramatically more expensive per hectare than protecting one that still stands. Erik Meijaard, a conservation scientist at the Nature Conservancy who once worked for Smits, has poi...

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Image: Alex Kaltim | CC BY-SA 4.0