In an area of Indonesian Borneo where the forest is still work, food, risk, habit and daily conflict, animal protection has taken a very simple form: a well-taken photo, an audio uploaded to an app, a verified report, a payment at the end of the month. It happens in the Kapuas Hulu district, in the province of West Kalimantan, in a pilot program called KehatiKu, a name that plays on Indonesian words close to the idea of ”heart” and “biodiversity”. The insight is almost brutal in its practicality: those who live near wildlife every day can become observers, collect data and receive money for each valid sighting.
The project was born from Borneo Futures, a scientific consultancy company led by biologist Erik Meijaard, and tries to correct a friction that often returns in fauna conservation: large funds, many strategies, results that are too slow. Meijaard says he developed the idea after years of intolerance towards the inefficiency of the sector. In 2022 he had worked on a study of twenty years of interventions to save orangutans: between 2000 and 2019 the conservation of orangutans had absorbed almost a billion dollars globally, while in the same period around 100 thousand individuals would have been lost. A huge amount on the one hand, a huge loss on the other. KehatiKu tries to move the money much closer to where the animals actually live.
The forest pays those who observe it
The mechanism is linear. Participants download the app for free, enter the forest whenever they want, record a photo, video or audio of what they see or hear, then send the report. There is a list of species for which compensation is expected. For common birds, such as the greater coucal, the payment can start at 5,000 Indonesian rupees, about 29 US cents. For a Bornean orangutan it costs up to 100 thousand rupees, equal to approximately 5.84 dollars. The program recognizes only one payment per day for the same animal, so as to reduce double registration attempts.
Verification remains the most delicate step. Each observation must be checked before payment, and today the work is carried out by a team of verifiers based in Brunei. On a larger scale, an AI-assisted recognition system will most likely be needed, because the numbers are already becoming overwhelming: the project receives around 300-400 observations per day. In one year of activity it collected around 175 thousand records, a very rare amount of information for such a large forest area.
The money arrives at the end of the month. The scene has something both ancient and very contemporary: a person in charge goes around the villages with a backpack containing around 100 million rupees, the equivalent of 5,840 dollars, and distributes the payments. The program already involves nine villages and over 800 observers. Some participants earn 100 thousand rupees a month, others reach up to 5 million rupees, about 292 dollars. In Kalimantan a person with an ordinary job can earn on average between 2 and 3 million rupees a month, so for many residents this activity can become a real, even prevalent, source of income. Syazwan Omar, head of the biodiversity unit of Borneo Futures, sums it up without romanticism: it also depends on everyone’s commitment.
Data, work and live animals
The overall cost, according to Meijaard, remains very low compared to classic programs: less than a dollar per hectare per year on a study area of approximately 200 thousand hectares, i.e. almost 500 thousand acres. With that amount the project achieves two things at once: involvement of local communities and real-time data on many species. Common birds, elusive mammals and threatened animals end up in the database, including the flat-headed cat, rhinoceros hornbill, Bornean orangutan and Bornean gibbon.
This data is used to build species presence metrics, useful for understanding where the animals are found, how often they are observed and how the effects of protection interventions change. The information remains accessible to the communities that produce it. With their consent, Borneo Futures also aims to make them available to international organizations such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, the large global archive that collects data on biodiversity. Meanwhile, the data has already been made available to the Indonesian government for conservation planning, including on the occasion of a national workshop on gibbons, with raw observations and employment statistics.
The most interesting part, however, happens in the villages. In some communities, observers have organized themselves into groups to search for birds and mammals together. At Nanga Embaloh, Tomi has turned what was initially a curiosity into a full-time job. By entering the forest often, he began to see how many species live around the village, and today the program has become a main source of livelihood for him. Other residents also participate continuously.
With the first payments, something also changed in the way of looking at hunting. Some villages have begun to self-regulate, banning hunting and trapping and installing signs to warn visitors. Susilawati, also from Nanga Embaloh, says that many were skeptical at first. Then the money arrived, membership increased and the community began to discuss the hunting ban. The logic, in its simplicity, works: if animals are hunted often, they become more shy, more difficult to see, less useful even for those who observe them. Since the program started, according to her, hunting in the village has stopped.
The orangutan stops being just a problem
Wildlife conservation often thrives on distant images: iconic animals, international campaigns, powerful photographs, big words. In the villages of Borneo the issue has a rougher grain. An orangutan can eat fruit, enter vegetable gardens, steal from gardens. For some local communities it is a problem animal, and in some cases also a source of meat. Meijaard puts it bluntly: the idea that orangutans must be protected at all costs is often perceived as Western. For those who suffer damage, the immediate benefit is barely visible.
KehatiKu tries to change that very daily calculation. An orangutan entering a cultivated area can still cause a nuisance, of course, but it can also become a paid alert. Anger leaves room for a different gesture: take the phone, photograph, send. The value of the living animal becomes more concrete, less abstract. Guardianship stops being just an external request and begins to enter the family budget.
Here the fragility of the project is also measured. Paul Ferraro, professor of human behavior and public policy at Johns Hopkins University, urges caution: similar programs work as long as the incentives continue. In the short term it is relatively easy to involve people and communities; maintaining motivation over time is another matter entirely. According to Ferraro, initiatives of this type usually produce moderate changes in terms of conservation and must be added to other tools, other incentives, other forms of local management. The long-term data will tell much more than the initial enthusiasm.
Meijaard seems to know this. For him the program remains first of all community: the local people make it work, they own it, they carry it forward or they choose to let it fall. Borneo Futures facilitates financial flow, builds infrastructure, organizes verification. The estate will depend on the villages, on trust, on payments, on the ability to turn sightings into useful information and live animals into an economically recognizable presence.
If data demonstrates a real effect on threatened wildlife, KehatiKu could be expanded to other areas of Indonesia within a few years. It remains to be seen how much the government will want to accompany this path. Meanwhile, in West Kalimantan, wildlife conservation also involves a man with a backpack full of rupees, a phone pointed between the trees, and a village that hangs a sign against hunting. Nothing epic. Just an animal that stays alive long enough to be worth more than a carcass.
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