A 40 km strip of replanted and protected forest now links two large blocks of rainforest in Southeast Asia that had been cut off from each other for decades by plantations and roads. The Canopy Bridge Trust, which led the project, says camera traps have already recorded clouded leopards, sun bears and gibbons using the corridor.
Habitat fragmentation is one of the biggest threats to rainforest wildlife. When forests are split into isolated patches, animals cannot move to find food or mates, and small populations become vulnerable to inbreeding and local extinction. The corridor gives them a continuous route between two protected areas covering more than 3,000 square kilometres in total.
Ten years of planting
The trust bought or leased land along the route over ten years, working with village councils and plantation owners. More than 1.2 million native seedlings were raised in local nurseries and planted by hand. Where the corridor crosses a main road, rope bridges strung between tall trees allow primates to cross above the traffic.
The first time a gibbon family crossed the rope bridge on camera, half the team watched the clip twenty times.
Field ecologist Dr Nurul Hakimah said the camera traps, 180 of them along the corridor, had logged 46 mammal species in the past year. Somchai Rattanakorn, a village leader whose community manages one of the nurseries, said the project had created steady jobs and reduced conflict, because wildlife now has a route that avoids farms.
Corridor length: 40 km
Native seedlings planted: more than 1.2 million
Mammal species recorded by camera traps: 46
The corridor is narrow in places, no more than a few hundred metres wide where it squeezes between oil palm estates. To protect those sections, the trust signed agreements with plantation companies to leave strips of forest along rivers and to keep dogs and hunters out. Rangers recruited from nearby villages patrol the route and remove snares, and they reported a sharp fall in signs of poaching over the past two years.
Researchers say it will take decades for the young forest to resemble the old growth on either side, and some species that need deep shade are yet to appear. The trust plans to extend the network with a second corridor to a third forest block further north.