Word: masen
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...already trained 45 community rangers and hopes to have a total of 150 protecting Ulu Masen by the end of next year. They are paid about $160 a month. Over 10 days, the recruits are taught survival skills, navigation, climbing and search and rescue. A graduation ceremony is held in a river at night, lit by flaming torches, where they are dunked beneath the water then hugged by their trainers. "It's like they've been cleansed, absolved of their pasts," says Linkie...
...Protecting crops from marauding elephants might seem peripheral to the task of preserving Ulu Masen. So might FFI's nursery in Geumpang, where farmers can learn grafting techniques and buy fruit-tree saplings at bargain prices. But both activities are designed to improve the livelihoods of local people, who are key allies in any REDD scheme. "These communities have to benefit," says Linkie. "That's the whole idea. They're getting an incentive not to cut [the forest] down." (See the top 10 green stories...
...incentives are more tangible than cash. Conservationists are considering cash payments to farmers in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso to stop them destroying the forest for agriculture. But with 120,000 households around Ulu Masen, even a multimillion-dollar sale of carbon credits might amount to only $100 to $200 a year per family, estimates Linkie. The money might be better pooled to build schools, bridges or other projects that would benefit the entire community. However it is distributed, a very clear message must be sent to the local communities, says Linkie: "You're getting this [money] because...
...protected? What happens if a forest burns to the ground?" A third concern is calculating how much carbon is stored in a forest, and what emissions are actually avoided by preserving it. In September a multinational research team led by French landscape ecologist David Gaveau asserted that the Ulu Masen scheme might not significantly reduce deforestation in northern Sumatra because much of the ecosystem is upland, inaccessible and therefore unlikely to be logged anyway...
...rebuts this. Ulu Masen borders another protected area called Leuser, also being developed as a REDD scheme, so leakage is not an issue within Aceh province. (The rest of Sumatra is another matter.) As for permanence, FFI has a "reserve pool" of forest to replace any lost to fire or disease, and promises "robust" accounting methods and monitoring by both satellite and field team. It says the calculations in the Gaveau report are incorrect and that Ulu Masen has "substantial lowland forests at risk...