After a long journey from Jakarta to the jungle of Central Kalimantan to make a film entitled “Years of Living Dangerously”,

Old Hollywood actor, Harrison Ford finally landed in Pekanbaru, Riau Province on Sumatra Island Friday night,

6 September 2013 with six film crew members and a researcher.

After staying one night at a five-star hotel on the outskirts of Pekanbaru,

Saturday morning, September 7 2013, Harrison and the entire team, including researchers, went to Sinar Mas’s oil palm plantation using two helicopters.

By spending more than half a day making a film at the estate,

The “Indiana Jones” film star then left for the Tesso Nilo Forest national park in Pelalawan and arrived around 5 pm at the flying squad camp, which is managed by the forestry department and the NGO WWF Indonesia.

When this aging star got off the helicopter, he immediately picked up the drink box trash that was in the field. After talking with the producer about the scene of getting off the helicopter, Harrison was more active in giving direction. Harrison was warmly welcomed by the Head of the Tesso Nilo Center, Kuppin Simbolon and WWF Indonesia Conservation Director, Nazir Fuad. Meanwhile, the Head of the Presidential Unit for Supervision and Development (UKP4), Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, only arrived in Tesso at 10 pm by road.

In Tesso Nilo National Park, which is the habitat of Sumatran elephants and Sumatran tigers, Harrison started filming at night by hearing a presentation from the Eyes on the Forest team about the condition of the Tesso Nilo forest. The presentation looked serious and thorough, especially since Harrison had seen directly from above the flyover towards Tesso Nilo.

From the guide on the coordinates of the travel route during the flyover, Harrison saw tens of thousands of hectares of forest areas that had been encroached on by migrant communities, traces of land burned during last June-August as well as HTI company corridor roads. The high rate of encroachment sparked fires in most of the Tesso Nilo forest during that period.

Tesso Nilo itself had an area of 83 thousand hectares in 2009 with secondary forest conditions after changing the function of limited production forests which had been controlled by a number of timber companies. This area has very high biodiversity, there are at least 360 types of flora in 165 genera and 57 tribes in each hectare. Apart from Sumatran tigers and elephants, this is also home to various types of primates, 114 types of birds, 50 types of fish, 33 types of herpetofauna and 644 types of beetles.

However, the fairly high level of encroachment has caused the still good Tesso Nilo forest to be reduced to more than 52 thousand hectares or more than 50% being converted into oil palm plantations. According to the WWF website, the area of oil palm in the Tesso Nilo forest complex is controlled and managed by individuals and groups identified as 524 people dominating 72% or 26,298 Ha of the total encroached area that has been converted into oil palm plantations covering 36,353 Ha. The average farm owned by an individual is 50 hectares, much larger than the average farm owned by farmers, which indicates a large amount of capital. The results of WWF’s investigation also identified 17 groups of encroachers who own oil palm plantations in the Tesso Nilo forest complex.

This high level of deforestation due to encroachment is what made the producer bring Harrison to Tesso Nilo. Unfortunately, Mongabay-Indonesia was unable to conduct an interview due to the tight shooting schedule from evening to Sunday afternoon. The head of UKP4, Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, was also present at Tesso Nilo to take pictures at one of the encroachment locations.

At dawn on Sunday 8 September 2013, Harrison and his team set off through the forest in Tesso Nilo National Park by foot, four-wheel drive car and riding elephants because the route was quite difficult for vehicles to pass.

Information obtained by Mongabay from Kalaulahari (Riau Forest Rescue Work Network) who accompanied the UKP4 group to Tesso Nilo, this film is a series of 8 film episodes which were broadcast in April 2014 on the Showtime cable TV channel.

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