Bird Surveys in Tropical Plantations
Motoko Fujita（Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University）
I started researches on birds in plantations in Indonesia
in 2007. The main focus was on the avian
diversity in acacia plantations of Company M in
Palembang with which RISH (Research Institute
for Sustainable Humanosphere, Kyoto University)
had just started a joint study on acacia. The goal of
my research was conservation of the biodiversity by
management, as the decrease in biodiversity is a hot
issue. Until then, I had been conducting fieldwork
only in Japan and this was my first time to do research
in Indonesia. I landed at Jakarta airport with
a mix of 70% excitement and 30% anxiety as I had
been told much about the difficulty and attractiveness
of Indonesia from others. My first impression of
Jakarta was the exotic aroma that pervaded the air,
which I realized later was Gudang Garam.
Palembang is a one-hour flight from Jakarta and
the city once flourished as the capital of Srivijaya
kingdom. Today, the city’s economy relies on crude
oil, rubber plantations, and acacia plantations for
pulp chips. The local camp site of Company M is a
4-5 hour drive from Palembang. In 2010, I started
the cooperative project of CSEAS with Company S,
which has its concession in peat land in Riau. Although
I have no research experience in the concessions
in Malaysia yet, I share my experience in Indonesia
in the hope that it might help other members
when conducting research with concession companies.
Research permission and cooperation from the company
Both similarities and differences in the collaborative
system toward the research between Company
M in Palembang and Company S in Riau provided
interesting information on the company’s policy.
Since the research projects are financially independent
from the company, it is not easy to ask for permission
and cooperation for the research.
For example, the president of Company M changes
every three years, so a sudden decline in research
might happen according to the president’s policy.
Mr. S, who was the president of the company when I
started my research, was quite cooperative. He even
arranged his schedule so that he could join me at
the research sites and observe the exotic birds with
his binoculars. The company’s attitude, however,
changed dramatically after his resignation. They
insisted that a biodiversity survey was somewhat
harmful to the company’s corporate activities. Looking
back on it all, I should have visited the company
more often to make reports on my research and
findings. Now I think that my lack of enthusiasm to
share my research findings with the company might
have caused the company’s indifference. I remembered
the words of Mr. S who once said “Birds are
good for drawing public attention as they are beautiful
but termites are not such attractive samples.” Biologists
think that biodiversity conservation should
be considered for all organisms, but for the public in
general, this is not the case. For instance, there is a
large gap between the attentions paid to Sumatran
tigers and earthworms. And this difference is recognized
not only among the general public or private
companies, but also can be found among the NGOs.
The role of earthworms is actually quite significant
in ecosystems. But it is not easy to collect donations
for earthworms; “Save the forest for the tigers” is
much more appealing to the public than “Save the
forest for the earthworms.”
On the other hand, obtaining research permission
from Company S was relatively easy. The company
proclaims biodiversity as one of its corporate strategies
and designates some parts of its concessions as
Human-nature Interactions in High Biomass Society 2
biodiversity conservation areas. Therefore, biodiversity
research of larger mammals and birds in the
conservation area was welcomed. The study advocated
the development of a new monitoring methodology
and this held great appeal for them.
Another problem that arose in the plantation research
was the difficulty of obtaining maps. Company
M strictly prohibits taking out of the forest
physiognomy charts on which tree age information
is clearly shown. This is because we could estimate
annual timber production from the chart. If no maps
are available, I have to make them by myself. This
was a good opportunity for me to learn how to use
satellite images by remote sensing to make land-use
maps, but it was a time-consuming process. On the
other hand, Company S allowed us to make photocopies
of the forest physiognomy charts without any
difficulty. I have no idea why this difference exists
between the two companies.
There were also clear differences between these
two companies in the working style of the employees.
Company M allowed its employees to take four
days off after working ten consecutive days, since
most of their employees’ families lived far from
the working sites. This allows the company to have
someone working every day, so I could conduct my
research almost any day of the week. For Company
S, it was a different story as many of the employees
live in the neighborhood, so most of them took their
days off over weekends. Although they could have
more time off if they worked weekends, we seldom
found anyone in the office on Saturdays or Sundays.
At the early stage of the research our request
to go into the forests on weekends was declined as
no company staff was available. We insisted on going
to the forest by ourselves but the company did
not allow us to go without the guidance of the staff.
Bird surveys usually start early in the morning (6:00
a.m.) but this request was also unacceptable for the
company as the employees’ working hours were 8:00
to 16:00. We were at a loss as to what to do. After
long discussions, we finally managed to obtain their
cooperation on weekends by asking their supervisors
to write a letter of support to help our research
as part of their job assignment. With this formal
instruction, they were able to have time off in lieu.
However, there was still no way for us to go to forests
early in the morning. I have experience of working
with a logging Company K in Kalimantan for
another project. In Company K, every day except for
the national holidays was a working day. The logging
site was located far from the town; we had to
switch cars three times for the 11-hour drive. As the
employees had to work in such a remote area, many
of them brought their families with them. Employees
of Company K didn’t complain about having to walk
into the forests with us early in the morning. Sometimes
we departed the camp at 5:00 and returned at
17:00. I should emphasize that we need to confirm
the working style of the employees beforehand for
smooth execution of the research activity.
For inter-disciplinary projects, the research activities
conducted by social scientists are sometimes declined
when they conduct surveys in plantations or
with logging companies. The policies on this issue
were not consistent among the logging companies
though. In 2008, we started to search for a candidate
site for transdisciplinary field work in the Global
COE program. The field of Company M, where our
joint research had already been progressed, was the
first candidate site. Although there was little problem
with scientific research, the company was not
happy with the social research on land conflicts and
the livelihood of the local people. The company was
in the middle of a strained situation with the local
people caused by the confusion of the post-Suharto
administration. Company M was highly skeptical
of social scientists, since it believed that it was
the research groups from overseas that had further
complicated the land issues. Company S of Riau,
on the other hand, approved the social researches
in their field, although it was not very excited by
the prospect. Therefore, we decided to launch joint
research with Company S. It is unclear why they
adopted such an open mind to social researches,
but this large company probably has the capacity to
deal with social researches, considering that they
need to handle frequent criticism from environmental
NGOs. Incidentally, Company K in Kalimantan
surprisingly asked us to investigate the conf licts
between the company and local residents, but this
is a rare case. I guess they needed the performance
record of social research, since they obtained a Forest
Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, which
needs to be assessed periodically for renewal.
Problems of reward
Rewarding of the workers is always a major issue.
In the case of group research it is important to
arrange the amount in advance, to avoid confusion
among the members. When there is a large budget,
we might consider paying a high rate. But this sometimes
causes trouble. As is often pointed out, once
the payment is fixed at a high rate, it becomes the
standard and other research groups will be forced to
pay the same rate. The best way might be to consult
with the local counterpart in advance about the appropriate
amount of payment.
I had some problems with this issue while in the
field. Among others, overtime payment puzzled me
a lot. My understanding of overtime was to pay on
an hourly basis when the workers needed to work
outside of their regular working hours of 7:00-16:00.
At that time, our bird survey was conducted from
6:00 to 18:00, so there were a few hours of overtime
work each day. We took a few days off every two
weeks, because I didn’t want to make the schedule
too tight. At the first meeting with the driver and
the company staff, I explained to them about the
schedule and guaranteed that they would be paid
extra wages for their overtime work, which might
be approximately two hours a day. So, I recorded
the start and finish time of the surveys every day. At
the end of the survey, I showed the actual working
time record and told them that the amount of overtime
would be about 500,000 Rupiah (more or less
5,000 yen). But the driver calculated an amount that
was three times more than that, which worked out to
be 1.5 times that of his monthly salary. I asked the
driver to explain but his claim didn’t make any sense
to me. The hourly rate was much higher than my calculation,
and working hours were almost double that
of my record. It seemed that he had factored the no-working
days and no-overtime days into his calculations.
His explanations in Indonesian were difficult
for me to follow, and I could not find a way out as I
was running out of budget. It was Ms. M, a capable
secretary, who solved this problem. She made me realize
that I was totally ignorant of the business customs
there. She pointed out that he was correct since
it was calculated based on Indonesian labor law. She
gave a clear and detailed explanation of the complex
calculation of the overtime payment. In short, (1)
if you employ someone for a certain period of time
and guarantee payment for the overtime work, off
days are included in the payment as well, (2) if you
agree to pay two-hours’ overtime a day, then the
payment for the first hour is X Rp (X = 1/173 of total
monthly payment) but for the subsequent hours, the
amount will be AX Rp (A was probably 1.5). In this
case, the odds were against me. Ms. M kindly visited
the car owner to explain the situation and asked
him to overlook my mistake. She managed to settle
Human-nature Interactions in High Biomass Society 4
the problem of the owner paying an extra amount of
overtime work to the driver. I really appreciated Ms.
M’s help on this. Since then, I always make sure that
I am familiar with the overtime payment before I
employ local people.
Languages
When conducting research in foreign countries,
communicating in the native language gives a great
advantage to the researchers. It is not mandatory for
the scientific researchers as long as you have a good
interpreter. But it will help you and make things
smoother if you can speak the local language. That
was my attitude until I had a problem with communication.
My first fieldwork assignment in Company
M went quite smoothly. “Terima kasih” was all I
could say so I had to communicate in English with
local staff. Fortunately, the company assigned me
with a member of staff, a young lady, who spoke
fluent English; with her perfect arrangement and
assistance I could finish my research activities without
any problems. But the next time I went to the
field, she had resigned from the company to study
abroad. Since an English-speaking assistant from
Bogor was with me, I was optimistic even though
my Indonesian capability remained quite limited (I
could manage to say a few simple phrases such as
“There’s a bird on that deadwood.”) One day, after
a week had passed, the driver disappeared after he
went to the town to fill the car with gasoline. I could
not go to the field without a car. He was not answering
his mobile phone. The car was found later on a
dirt road, destroyed, wrecked, laying on its side. The
driver was not hurt by the accident, but he ran away
as he was afraid of taking responsibility for the accident.
The biggest problem was how to repair the
rental car. It was difficult to believe from a Japanese
perspective, but the rental car didn’t have any insurance
at all! A necessary repair charge, about 90,000
Japanese yen in this case, was supposed to be paid
half by the car owner and the other half by the
renter. But according to the agent, the car owner was
unwilling to pay half of the repair charge. The odds
were stacked against me. The company staff was
sorry to see me in deep trouble, and negotiated with
the agent to settle that matter. But it was me who
decided everything and signed the documents. The
staff was very cooperative and kind enough to explain
things in Indonesian until I fully understood.
I had never been so eager to understand what they
were talking about, and as a result, I learned lots of
Indonesian words in a very short time. With their
great help, it was settled that I would pay 45,000 yen
for the repair cost. Actually, I had been given two
options for rental cars for the fieldwork; a 4WD car,
provided by Company M, with full insurance coverage
but expensive, and the car that I rented. The
rental fee for the 4WD car was about 250,000 yen
for less than two months excluding gas. To save my
research budget, I rented a cheaper non-4WD car
from a rental car shop in the town (about 170,000 for
two months). The lesson I learnt is that we should
rent a 4WD car if we have to travel on dirt roads
even though it’s expensive.
As a result of these events, my Indonesian has
improved slightly so that I can manage to perform
simple tasks or negotiations. However, there is a
negative effect of this. When people know that I
understand and speak Indonesian, they approach me
directly regarding their needs. Most frequently, this
consists of requests for borrowing money for vari-
Photo2: A heavily-damaged rented car (photo by Motoko Fujita)
5 Planted Forests in Equatorial Southeast Asia:
ous reasons; their children are sick, or they have lost
their jobs. But there is one thing that is clear. If you
lend some money to them, you will never get the
money back. “Minta pinjam uang” is Indonesian for
borrowing money, but I think it is more precise to
say “minta kasih uang” which means “give me some
money”.
Joyful fieldworks
Collaborating with a private company is not mainstream
in the area of ecological science. Moreover,
when working with a plantation company, which is
often a target of criticism of biodiversity decline,
publishing the results sometimes requires extreme
care. Natural forests have far richer biodiversity
compared to plantations. First of all, the bird species
that inhabit natural forests and plantations are
different. In natural forests, birds that prefer deep
forests are found and most of them are very cautious
and shy. In plantations, on the other hand, most bird
species favor open spaces. If most of the surrounding
environments are natural forests, with little open
spaces, those open habitats also may be an important
habitat for birds. But now, natural forests are
decreasing and open habitats are spreading. To conserve
bird biodiversity, we need to preserve as much
natural forest as possible. But how do we do this?
Setting a large area of natural forest as a protected
area is one way, or retaining a strip of natural forest
along a small river is also possible. It is easy to
criticize plantations, but what scientists should do is
to record their impacts in a scientific manner, so that
we know how to conserve biodiversity.
Ultimately, fieldwork in tropical forests provides
me with valuable experience that no other place
can offer. Morning starts with the chorus of various
birds, followed by gibbons echoing through the
deep forest, and soon the forest is filled with the
overwhelming power of wild creatures. Once the
heat has subsided in the evening, the breeze will
relax you. Although troublesome from time to time,
I like the people and their way of living in tropical
areas. To me, they seem to be very flexible and
adaptable, possibly because of the ethnic diversity of
their communities. In the tropics, there is something
special that really attracts me, which I cannot find in
Japan. Southeast Asia has been experiencing drastic
changes in recent years, but I hope the landscape
here continues to deserve the label “beautiful” forever.
For inter-disciplinary projects, the research activities
conducted by social scientists are sometimes declined
when they conduct surveys in plantations or
with logging companies. The policies on this issue
were not consistent among the logging companies
though. In 2008, we started to search for a candidate
site for transdisciplinary field work in the Global
COE program. The field of Company M, where our
joint research had already been progressed, was the
first candidate site. Although there was little problem
with scientific research, the company was not
happy with the social research on land conflicts and
the livelihood of the local people. The company was
in the middle of a strained situation with the local
people caused by the confusion of the post-Suharto
administration. Company M was highly skeptical
of social scientists, since it believed that it was
the research groups from overseas that had further
complicated the land issues. Company S of Riau,
on the other hand, approved the social researches
in their field, although it was not very excited by
the prospect. Therefore, we decided to launch joint
research with Company S. It is unclear why they
adopted such an open mind to social researches,
but this large company probably has the capacity to
deal with social researches, considering that they
need to handle frequent criticism from environmental
NGOs. Incidentally, Company K in Kalimantan
surprisingly asked us to investigate the conf licts
between the company and local residents, but this
is a rare case. I guess they needed the performance
record of social research, since they obtained a Forest
Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, which
needs to be assessed periodically for renewal.
Problems of reward
Rewarding of the workers is always a major issue.
In the case of group research it is important to
arrange the amount in advance, to avoid confusion
among the members. When there is a large budget,
we might consider paying a high rate. But this sometimes
causes trouble. As is often pointed out, once
the payment is fixed at a high rate, it becomes the
standard and other research groups will be forced to
pay the same rate. The best way might be to consult
with the local counterpart in advance about the appropriate
amount of payment.
I had some problems with this issue while in the
field. Among others, overtime payment puzzled me
a lot. My understanding of overtime was to pay on
an hourly basis when the workers needed to work
outside of their regular working hours of 7:00-16:00.
At that time, our bird survey was conducted from
6:00 to 18:00, so there were a few hours of overtime
work each day. We took a few days off every two
weeks, because I didn’t want to make the schedule
too tight. At the first meeting with the driver and
the company staff, I explained to them about the
schedule and guaranteed that they would be paid
extra wages for their overtime work, which might
be approximately two hours a day. So, I recorded
the start and finish time of the surveys every day. At
the end of the survey, I showed the actual working
time record and told them that the amount of overtime
would be about 500,000 Rupiah (more or less
5,000 yen). But the driver calculated an amount that
was three times more than that, which worked out to
be 1.5 times that of his monthly salary. I asked the
driver to explain but his claim didn’t make any sense
to me. The hourly rate was much higher than my calculation,
and working hours were almost double that
of my record. It seemed that he had factored the no-working
days and no-overtime days into his calculations.
His explanations in Indonesian were difficult
for me to follow, and I could not find a way out as I
was running out of budget. It was Ms. M, a capable
secretary, who solved this problem. She made me realize
that I was totally ignorant of the business customs
there. She pointed out that he was correct since
it was calculated based on Indonesian labor law. She
gave a clear and detailed explanation of the complex
calculation of the overtime payment. In short, (1)
if you employ someone for a certain period of time
and guarantee payment for the overtime work, off
days are included in the payment as well, (2) if you
agree to pay two-hours’ overtime a day, then the
payment for the first hour is X Rp (X = 1/173 of total
monthly payment) but for the subsequent hours, the
amount will be AX Rp (A was probably 1.5). In this
case, the odds were against me. Ms. M kindly visited
the car owner to explain the situation and asked
him to overlook my mistake. She managed to settle
Human-nature Interactions in High Biomass Society 4
the problem of the owner paying an extra amount of
overtime work to the driver. I really appreciated Ms.
M’s help on this. Since then, I always make sure that
I am familiar with the overtime payment before I
employ local people.
Languages
When conducting research in foreign countries,
communicating in the native language gives a great
advantage to the researchers. It is not mandatory for
the scientific researchers as long as you have a good
interpreter. But it will help you and make things
smoother if you can speak the local language. That
was my attitude until I had a problem with communication.
My first fieldwork assignment in Company
M went quite smoothly. “Terima kasih” was all I
could say so I had to communicate in English with
local staff. Fortunately, the company assigned me
with a member of staff, a young lady, who spoke
fluent English; with her perfect arrangement and
assistance I could finish my research activities without
any problems. But the next time I went to the
field, she had resigned from the company to study
abroad. Since an English-speaking assistant from
Bogor was with me, I was optimistic even though
my Indonesian capability remained quite limited (I
could manage to say a few simple phrases such as
“There’s a bird on that deadwood.”) One day, after
a week had passed, the driver disappeared after he
went to the town to fill the car with gasoline. I could
not go to the field without a car. He was not answering
his mobile phone. The car was found later on a
dirt road, destroyed, wrecked, laying on its side. The
driver was not hurt by the accident, but he ran away
as he was afraid of taking responsibility for the accident.
The biggest problem was how to repair the
rental car. It was difficult to believe from a Japanese
perspective, but the rental car didn’t have any insurance
at all! A necessary repair charge, about 90,000
Japanese yen in this case, was supposed to be paid
half by the car owner and the other half by the
renter. But according to the agent, the car owner was
unwilling to pay half of the repair charge. The odds
were stacked against me. The company staff was
sorry to see me in deep trouble, and negotiated with
the agent to settle that matter. But it was me who
decided everything and signed the documents. The
staff was very cooperative and kind enough to explain
things in Indonesian until I fully understood.
I had never been so eager to understand what they
were talking about, and as a result, I learned lots of
Indonesian words in a very short time. With their
great help, it was settled that I would pay 45,000 yen
for the repair cost. Actually, I had been given two
options for rental cars for the fieldwork; a 4WD car,
provided by Company M, with full insurance coverage
but expensive, and the car that I rented. The
rental fee for the 4WD car was about 250,000 yen
for less than two months excluding gas. To save my
research budget, I rented a cheaper non-4WD car
from a rental car shop in the town (about 170,000 for
two months). The lesson I learnt is that we should
rent a 4WD car if we have to travel on dirt roads
even though it’s expensive.
As a result of these events, my Indonesian has
improved slightly so that I can manage to perform
simple tasks or negotiations. However, there is a
negative effect of this. When people know that I
understand and speak Indonesian, they approach me
directly regarding their needs. Most frequently, this
consists of requests for borrowing money for vari-
Photo2: A heavily-damaged rented car (photo by Motoko Fujita)
5 Planted Forests in Equatorial Southeast Asia:
ous reasons; their children are sick, or they have lost
their jobs. But there is one thing that is clear. If you
lend some money to them, you will never get the
money back. “Minta pinjam uang” is Indonesian for
borrowing money, but I think it is more precise to
say “minta kasih uang” which means “give me some
money”.
Joyful fieldworks
Collaborating with a private company is not mainstream
in the area of ecological science. Moreover,
when working with a plantation company, which is
often a target of criticism of biodiversity decline,
publishing the results sometimes requires extreme
care. Natural forests have far richer biodiversity
compared to plantations. First of all, the bird species
that inhabit natural forests and plantations are
different. In natural forests, birds that prefer deep
forests are found and most of them are very cautious
and shy. In plantations, on the other hand, most bird
species favor open spaces. If most of the surrounding
environments are natural forests, with little open
spaces, those open habitats also may be an important
habitat for birds. But now, natural forests are
decreasing and open habitats are spreading. To conserve
bird biodiversity, we need to preserve as much
natural forest as possible. But how do we do this?
Setting a large area of natural forest as a protected
area is one way, or retaining a strip of natural forest
along a small river is also possible. It is easy to
criticize plantations, but what scientists should do is
to record their impacts in a scientific manner, so that
we know how to conserve biodiversity.
Ultimately, fieldwork in tropical forests provides
me with valuable experience that no other place
can offer. Morning starts with the chorus of various
birds, followed by gibbons echoing through the
deep forest, and soon the forest is filled with the
overwhelming power of wild creatures. Once the
heat has subsided in the evening, the breeze will
relax you. Although troublesome from time to time,
I like the people and their way of living in tropical
areas. To me, they seem to be very flexible and
adaptable, possibly because of the ethnic diversity of
their communities. In the tropics, there is something
special that really attracts me, which I cannot find in
Japan. Southeast Asia has been experiencing drastic
changes in recent years, but I hope the landscape
here continues to deserve the label “beautiful” forever.
