Bukit Tigapuluh (Thirty Hills)

The Thirty Hills Forest Landscape, with nearly 508,000 hectares of contiguous dry lowland and mountain forests spread across Riau and Jambi provinces, contains some of the richest biodiversity on Earth. Thirthy Hills contains one of the last large unfragmented dry lowland forests in Sumatra, which have almost “extinct” on the island. It is one of the last refuges for three of the four flagship Sumatran species (orangutans, elephants and tigers), along with at least 250 other recorded mammal and bird species. The core area with the area’s steepest slopes of about 144,000 hectares is protected as Bukit Tigapuluh National Park. The surrounding gentle slopes, ideal habitat for elephants and orangutans, remain completely unprotected.

Until 2006, this forest block was relatively free from large-scale commercial forest conversion because of its hilly terrain. However, as police cracked down on illegal logging in Riau Province, the activity shifted to Jambi Province and Thirty Hills is under threat. The landscape will soon be split into two by a massive, legally questionable logging highway connecting forest concessions associated with APP to APP’s pulp mills in Riau and Jambi provinces.

The indigenous tribes Talang Mamak and Orang Rimba (also called Kubu) live in the Thirthy Hills landscape. The Talang Mamak are a sedentary tribe who live only in the Thirthy Hills landscape. The Orang Rimba people are nomadic,about 3000 members of this tribe survive, mostly in Jambi.. They migrate through natural forests and depend on natural resources from the forest and river everywhere in this forest block for their existence.

The Thirthy Hills landscape was designated one of “global priority” landscapes for tiger conservation by a global team of tiger scientists in 2006. The Government of Indonesia confirmed this selection when it announced at the International Tiger Forum in St. Petersburg on 24 November 2010, that Thirthy Hills would be one of the six priority areas where it would focus its efforts for doubling tiger population in 2022.

Just recently WWF’s camera traps filmed 12 tigers living in just one small forest block of the regioninside 30 Hills, including a set of extremely rare tiger triplets. This footage proves that tigers are breeding and living successfully in the Thirthy Hills forest. In addition to losing their habitat to forest clearing here, these tigers are under an additional assault from poachers for their body parts, which are highly valued on the black market.

The Thirty Hills is also the site of a successful conservation project to reintroduce Sumatran orangutans, 90 of which now reside in a part of the landscape that is proposed for protected status but is already being cleared by APP-affiliated companies. Thirthy Hills is the only existing wild habitat for this great ape outside the provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra.

Click here for more on the Orang Rimba story

Click here for "Orang Rimba" video by CNN

Click here for tiger cubs video in Thirty Hills

Click here to know more about WWF tiger scientists work in Thirty Hills