For all our technology and exploration, we still haven’t found life anywhere else in perceivable space, besides this little planet we call earth.
The use of natural resources, and the conversion of land for human use, is exponentially increasing. The majority of the planet is now imprinted with our activity, leading us into a new geological era, the Anthropocene.
There are just a few pockets of untouched land left where life abounds, where the diversity of life is so complex, once altered, it will be lost forever; these are the Last of the Wild Places.
WHAT’S SPECIAL ABOUT SUMATRA?
For those who are unaware, there’s an ecological divider called the Wallace line, named after a scientist that shaped a lot of modern biological thinking. He worked out that there are 2 distinct groups of biota in Asia: one that includes many big brained mammals like tigers, orangutans and elephants; it spreads from Africa, through Asia, and all the way down to about half way through Indonesia…
On the other side of the Wallace line things change; so from Papua down to Australia, you transition to different family groups, like the marsupials you find in Australia…
WHAT’S SO SPECIAL ABOUT SUMATRA?
The Leuser ecosystem in the northern province of Aceh, is the last place on earth where rhino, elephant, orangutan and tiger live in the one forest… not mention bears, porcupines, hornbills, flying lizards and the list goes on. From Sumatra, the further you travel north from the Wallace line, the greater the loss of ecological diversity. There are some pre-human causes for this, but since industrialised agriculture has taken hold, it’s been a rapid fire of local extinctions. The Island of Sumatra has now become one of the last bastions of biodiversity in Southern Asia; it’s almost like a naturally occurring ecological arc. It’s a place where all the components needed for life exist, and have done for millions of years; resisting a raft of geological events like ice ages, and up until recently, it has withstood human driven extinction events.
Conserve Protect Restore
This biodiversity hot spot needs to be preserved… for the environmental services it provides to the planet, for the undiscovered science it contains, and for plethora of species it supports, including homo sapiens. The people that live here need to be empowered to protect their forest; you can do this by financially supporting conservation NGO’s, making lifestyle changes around the products you consume that originate from this landscape, and by investing in ecologically responsible business’s that operate in Sumatra… like taking an eco-tour of this magical island! To learn more, contact us