The Gansal River is the lifeline of the Talang Mamak community in Bukit Tigapuluh National Park, providing the only transport route. To mark World Water Day, a team of community development experts from the Frankfurt Zoological Society and the national park set off on an expedition into the park to visit the village community in Suit. Since attending a field school training course organised by the Frankfurt Zoological Society, the community has been running a tree nursery and a demonstration plot for agroforestry. As part of a pilot project, the community is cultivating stingless bees in Suit to generate cash income.

Since 2020, we have been working with these communities to promote agroforestry systems that help to secure their daily need for healthy food. We took the opportunity of World Water Day to review which measures are working, which are less effective and how we can continue to help in the future through fast-track measures.

The Frankfurt Zoological Society has donated two canoes, each fitted with a powerful outboard motor, to the national park. They are not glamorous gifts. But they may be the most honest kind — the sort that acknowledges, without pretense, that trust between a conservation institution and a forest community is not built through reports or scheduled calls. It is built trip by trip, along a river. With reliable boats now in service, health workers can keep appointments, teachers can plan visits, and the Talang Mamak can expect, perhaps for the first time with confidence, that someone will arrive when they said they would. Communication, long hampered by distance, has a vessel at last — and with it, the possibility of something that no fast-track measure alone can manufacture: genuine cooperation.