Conservation Influencers

The Indonesia Hornbill Conservation Society

West Java, Indonesia

Founded in 2013 by the biologist Yokyok Hadiprakarsa, Rangkong Indonesia, which operates The Indonesia Hornbill Conservation Society (IHCS), is the research unit of the Rekam Nusantara Foundation, a group of environmental media, wildlife and marine researchers. IHCS exists to protect all 13 species of hornbills that live in the country’s forests, two of which are in CITES’s appendix I and eleven in appendix II.

To protect Indonesian hornbills, IHCS says that it is ‘necessary to protect 98 million hectares of the country’s tropical rainforest’. As part of that protection plan, IHCS, according to its website, helped draft the government’s Helmut Hornbill Conservation Strategy and Action Plan of 2018. It also works closely with indigenous communities in the forests to combat poaching and to ‘develop and implement legal protections for hornbills in Indonesia’.

One of its main campaigns is to protect the helmeted hornbill, which has been listed in CITES’ appendix I since 1975. However, this species is still sometimes exploited for its solid keratin casque, so-called red ivory, because it can be carved into artefacts.

Leader

Yokyok Hadiprakarsa. A joint winner, with six others, of the 2020 Whitley Award, organized by The Whitley Fund for Nature, launched in 2001, with support from WWF-UK.

Governance

Unknown.

Finances

Unknown.

About the directory

Conservation Influencers is a searchable directory of the animal activist, environmental and ecological lobby. It examines the history, mission, methodology and reputation of NGOs to assess their impact on the global conservation cause.

Featured

Franz Weber Foundation

From 1990 until 2015, Franz Weber Foundation (FFW) managed the Fazao-Malfakassa National Park in Togo, which was, according to an in-depth investigation by Duke University, ‘established by forcing the local communities off their land and without taking into consideration their point of view’. That same study cited convincing evidence from reports published in 1990, confirming that competition for land use was already ‘creating conflict between the local communities and park managers’. In 2015 Togo refused to renew FFW’s contract because, the report says, ‘local communities were still excluded from the management of the natural resources of their land’ and FFW had ‘failed to fulfil its contract’. Franz Weber Foundation plays a major role within CITES because it funds and manages from Switzerland the African Elephant Coalition (AEC), which represents 32 African range states, some of which have barely any elephants and others none at all. Contrary to the wishes of the range states in Southern Africa, which manage most of the world’s wild elephant populations, the AEC at CITES’ CoPs repeatedly tables proposals to put all of the world’s elephants in appendix I. And the AEC uses its voting power to keep in place prohibitions on ivory sales and all other trade in elephant-related derivatives, including skins and hair, which Southern African nations wish to legalise.

IWMC is a not-for-profit organization incorporated in Canada with its Head Office 3, Passage de Montriond, Lausanne 1006, Switzerland. Phone: 41.21.616-5000. For more information, contact IWMC here. Twitter @iwmcwct

All rights reserved © 2022. See Terms and conditions for usage and cookies policies.

The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the various authors and forum participants on this web site do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the IWMC World Conservation Trust or official policies of the IWMC.