OFI President, Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas, wades through the swamp.

A large part of OFI's work to save orangutans from extinction involves protecting the forests of Borneo. Orangutans must have a place to live.

Protecting the land is a big task, and it takes many forms. OFI works with the forestry department and police to coordinate patrolling efforts in Tanjung Puting National Park against poachers, illegal loggers and miners, arsonists and more. We purchase land before it can be sold to a palm oil (or other agricultural) corporation to be converted to plantations. We patrol the land we have purchased. We help negotiate legal status for protected land. We monitor the damage from the dry-season fires, which are more intense every year. We plant trees to rejuvenate the burned areas. When communities or individuals wish to sell us their land but do not have legal proof of ownership, we provide assistance with procuring the documentation. When individuals within a community dispute who owns the land, we help resolve the conflicts. And, as always, we continue to patrol.

But all of these actions start the same way: we must survey the land.

OFI staff undertake survey missions to ensure the piece of land in question is, in fact, in the general vicinity at which it was alleged to exist, to determine GPS coordinates of its boundaries, to place it on a map, and assess the biodiversity. The objectives may be simple but achieving them is far from an easy task when you are working in a place that is, quite literally, off the map.

  In Central Kalimantan (Borneo), where OFI works, even accessing land can be a challenge. Much of the land we are surveying - particularly the forested land that has been offered to us for sale - is difficult to reach. Transit alone can encompass an all-day expedition. Roads good enough for cars can only take you so far. OFI's Survey Team must leave the cars and, when they're lucky, take off-road motorbikes for a stretch. When they're not lucky, they're on foot for miles. Sometimes boats are the only way in. Many of the streams are too small for speedboats. When the only option is to rent a small wooden canoe from an enterprising local villager, our team can only hope the retro-fitted engine (often borrowed from a motorbike) is in good repair.

Pak Fajar operates a drone to survey land in Tanjung Puting National Park near to Camp Leakey.

Once they reach the land, the real work begins. In areas with extensive undergrowth (like the Rawa Kuno area of OFI's Orangutan Legacy Forest), a man with a machete must be in the lead, hacking a path as he goes. Between one step and the next, the survey teams can find themselves in swamp up to their hips as the terrain changes underfoot with little warning above.

OFI's survey teams are armed with cutting edge technology (drones powered by smartphones, handheld GPS devices) along with some of the oldest tools known to humankind (machetes and rope woven as needed on-site from vines). It's the ultimate blend of old and new as OFI's staff jerry-rig malfunctioning engines, identify the plants their Dayak grandparents taught them, read animal tracks on the ground and on the trunks of trees, spot orangutan nests in the canopy, draw diagrams in the sand with sticks to debate directions with the local accompanying the team, and collect aerial photography data with a drone in the sky.

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