An ongoing partnership between the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF) and Dutch restoration company Land Life is driving large-scale ecosystem recovery in Central Kalimantan. Combining local community leadership with international funding, this valuable reforestation project is driving ecological and social impact in the Mawas region.
Since 2022, BOSF and Land Life have been working together to restore critically threatened orangutan habitat in the Mawas area. During our 2022-2024 pilot project, we restored 150 hectares, and in 2024, we scaled up to a larger project area.
Despite six months of heavy rainfall delaying planting earlier this year, seedlings were safely maintained in local ‘holding’ nurseries — allowing the 2025 season to move forward once floodwaters receded.
By August 2025, Land Life and BOSF will have restored 270 hectares of degraded land, building on 90 hectares already recovered this year through Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR).
BOSF-Land Life projects are deeply community-driven — providing meaningful employment and a sense of ownership and pride to the Dayak Indigenous people across everything from planting and site maintenance to growth monitoring and protection, along with capacity building and community awareness programs. The seedlings required for the plantings are grown and tended to in Land Life-funded community nurseries to ensure ecological recovery with the most suitable tree species and long-term social impact.
Earlier this year, the partnership celebrated the opening of a new field station and five new field posts that support nursery management, planting logistics, and fire monitoring in this remote region.
Land Life is also introducing a biodiversity baselining service that will include bioacoustics monitoring in collaboration with Utrecht University in the Netherlands, providing corporate partners a credible way to track and report on the nature impacts of their BOSF-Land Life restoration projects.
We look forward to scaling up our restoration efforts with Land Life in the years ahead. Together, we’re building a future where orangutans — and their forests — can thrive.
The Mawas Conservation Program is a proven model for large-scale forest restoration. With our project partner Weleda, our teams on the ground are actively assisting in the management of 309,000 hectares of peatland to reduce the risk of forest fires,
The BOS Foundation has decided to move the Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre in Central Kalimantan, to a new location that better serves the above requirements.
In collaboration with the Institut Pertanian Bogor (IPB University) and the University of British Columbia, a camera trap project aims to answer questions about the distribution of orangutans after being released in the Bukit Batikap Protection Fores
