KehatiKu

KehatiKu: Community-Based Biodiversity Monitoring

The Kehatiku program, implemented by Borneo Futures through philanthropic funding, represents a paradigm shift in tropical conservation. Operating in the highly biodiverse landscapes of West Kalimantan in Indonesian Borneo, Kehatiku has successfully established a revolutionary, citizen-science-based biodiversity monitoring system driven entirely by Indigenous People and local communities.

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Launched in April 2025, the program has scaled rapidly across 9 pilot villages. In just over a year, Kehatiku has mobilized an active network of approximately 800 individual indigenous and community observers. To date, this ground-level network has generated a staggering 200,000 wildlife observations, including sightings of critically endangered and endangered flagship species such as the Bornean Orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) and Abbott’s Gibbon (Hylobates abbotti).

To manage this unprecedented influx of community-sourced data, Borneo Futures engineered a proprietary smartphone app and an advanced data dashboard designed to rigorously verify, visualize, and analyze every incoming observation. Unlike traditional, passive citizen science initiatives, Kehatiku is sustainably woven into the local economy; participants receive small, performance-based incentive payments for their contributions. In a region facing intense economic pressures, these payments have quickly become a vital livelihood option for local families, directly aligning economic well-being with environmental stewardship.

Today, the Kehatiku program stands alone in the global conservation arena. With a dataset of 200,000 points, we have the statistical power required to build highly accurate, robust species occupancy models for these vital primates and other wildlife. By marrying cutting-edge data architecture with localized economic incentives and indigenous ecological knowledge, Kehatiku is globally unique offering a scalable, community-led model for the future of biodiversity monitoring.