Terrestrial
Promoting a sustainable landscape approach to terrestrial management, SSIC consultants have supported a
wide range of initiatives. From developing sustainable forest, habitat, and wildlife management practices to advancing
sustainable agricultural activities and reconciling competing land-use management issues,
our consultants have provided services to government agencies and non-governmental
organizations in both the non-profit and corporate sectors.
Supporting fund-raising and strategic plan implementation for the Protected Areas Collaboration (PAC); a joint venture of the Tasmanian Land Conservancy and the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute. PAC aims to bring people together to learn and grow capabilities to better care for nature and protected areas in the Asia-Pacific.
Guiding additional consultations and review of draft sustainable management plan with key stakeholders from communities, government agencies and associated NGO’s, to identify priority targets and activities to promote sustainable development and marine conservation in Cristo Rei protected area.
Supporting the organization in the preliminary stage of strategic planning. This phase 1 work involved reviewing all available organizational information and identifying the emerging cross-landscape themes and strategic approaches of the organization; reviewing, mapping and documenting the overarching progress of the organization through the lens of these thematic strategic approaches using a desk assessment and remote consultations with key staff and stakeholders; undertaking a preliminary assessment of these approaches’ strengths (and weaknesses) to further explore, identify, and refine those that offer the potential for growth or scaling; and developing a robust preliminary ‘strategic framework’ to guide and inform full strategic planning.
Facilitating the staff team of Chumbe Island Coral Park, in Zanzibar Tanzania, to develop an Interpretation and Education Plan (IEP) through collaboration with specialists in USFS. Chumbe is an internationally acclaimed marine protected area, and IEP production involved supporting the team to more clearly define the projects’ IE themes, topics and storylines, revisit and better define IE target audiences, take stock of existing IE assets and assess IE status, gaps and needs.
Providing advisory support to two parallel projects addressing human-wildlife conflict. Support focuses on facilitating the client organizations to enable them to undertake: (a) profiling of the communities to better understand human-elephant-conflicts (HEC) issues; (b) saving lives by raising awareness about elephants, their ecology, conservation needs, causes of conflict and how to avoid it; (c) protecting livelihoods through seasonal solar-powered electric fences and planting elephant-proof cash-crops; (d) reducing poverty by enabling supplementary income-generation through training, seed-funding and supervision for diverse on-&-off farm micro-enterprises, especially for women; and (e) securing safe passage for people/elephants by establishing trained rapid response teams to reduce tension during human-elephant interactions.
Advising the Conservation Ecology Centre in the development of a new social enterprise ‘Wildlife Wonders’ that will raise new conservation funds for the Otways region of southern Australia.
Facilitating a multi-stakeholder review of a draft conservation priority assessment for Sumatra. Drafting a synopsis of the assessment, designing, developing and delivering a participatory workshop with international and local institutional representatives. Producing a prioritization report with recommendations for adaptations to the assessment.
Supporting clients of the Green Infrastructure Center, Inc. (GIC) to identify strategies to protect and enhance natural assets and recommending land plans and policies to conserve the most critical resources. GIC was formed in 2006 to help local governments, communities, and regional planning organizations, land trusts and developers evaluate their green infrastructure assets and make plans to conserve them. Support includes provision of a suite of tools – economic analysis, mapping, land use planning and asset assessment – needed by communities to protect and restore their natural assets. Staff teams help localities inventory their assets and create strategies for their conservation or restoration, at the regional and local scale, in rural, suburban and urban environments.
Ensuring the smooth implementation of projects being funded and implemented around Asia until a new person is found to fill this position at Elephant Family (EF).
Providing training to all East DRC staff in how to increase the impact of their previous education work by incorporating behavior change science and thinking into their strategies. Identifying key target audiences, messaging, and removing barriers to support behavior change strategies to reduce bushmeat hunting and consumption in the East DRC. Prioritizing strategies and developing the monitoring and evaluation needed to determine if they are effective.
Supporting the re-design and implementation of training for Wildlife Conservation Network Partners in core areas such as fundraising, budgeting, team management, team-building, and communication. Providing WCN trainers with refresh training in adult learning, designing effective meetings, and identifying learning objectives.
Designing an Open Standards-oriented monitoring and evaluation framework for all projects and strategies in the Institutions Africa Program. Identifying meaningful indicators of success, and providing training for staff in developing strategic project plans, proposals, data collection, and adaptive management.
Assisting in the setting of up a charitable organization that will establish a sanctuary for captive elephants in Europe.
Devising a digital survey and developing an automated report generation tool for the Social and Environmental Impact Assessment (SEIA) as part of the RSPO certification process for oil palm smallholders.
Training national forest inventory staff of the Lao PDR national forest and providing assistance with data analysis.
Producing a toolkit chapter on the use of applications on carbon for the High Carbon Stock Approach (HCSA) toolkit 2.0.
Programming an R script to automate the data analysis of the Lao PDR national forest inventory and training of nation forest inventory staff.
Providing support to a Systematic Conservation Planning exercise with the World Wide Fund for Nature, Malaysia, by developing decision support tools and undertaking associated MARXAN analysis. Resulted in production of a conservation planning manual to be used by local government authorities, and assignment included follow-up data revision, analysis and capacity building.
Providing strategic planning guidance, program development and implementation support to Borneo Nature Foundation, working to protect some of the most important areas of tropical rainforest in Borneo. Technical support provided in research areas related to monitoring the distribution, population status, behaviour and ecology of the Sabangau Forest’s flagship ape species, and supporting biodiversity and forestry research initiatives in support of the Rungan River Orangutan Conservation Programme (RROCP).
As part of Forest Inform Pty Ltd provided GIS technical support and analysis for the development of Taninthayi region’s 10 Year Forest Management Plan. Assignment in support of Fauna & Flora International (FFI).
Developing an interpretative program for visitors to a newly established wildlife sanctuary at Charnley River-Artesian Range in the northern Kimberley, under the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC), including research and development of interpretative materials about wildlife conservation, Australian savanna ecology and AWC’s conservation approach. Fundraising program preparation for AWC’s north-west region and training of interpretative staff.
Participating in the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) proposal review, and “matching” with team(s) where additional external facilitation assistance was beneficial, particularly around project inception by supporting the team science process, meeting planning and facilitation. Working in conjunction with SESYNC staff, interacting with that team’s leaders to further familiarize with the project, develop a facilitation plan, and conducting follow up conversations to assess outcomes and further needs.
Developing an interpretation program about wildlife conservation challenges and approaches in Australia’s northern savanna ecosystems for dissemination to visiting scientists, donors and the general public at AWC wildlife sanctuaries. Training interpretation and wilderness camp staff in wildlife and savanna ecology, designing interpretative materials (print and digital media), fitting out the interpretative centre, fundraising event planning, preparation and coordination, eco-tour and guiding program development. Assignment in support of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC).
Assisting Sabah Forestry Department’s (SFD’s) efforts to better conserve and sustainably manage the rainforests of Sabah, Malaysia. Assignment under the Nature Conservancy for Sabah Forest Department, working alongside the team leader, the forestry planning specialist and SFD counterparts to determine the availability of appropriately formatted spatial data for analysis of all relevant issues associated with recommended strategies.
Leading grant writing for ‘Publish What You Pay, Indonesia’, for World Bank grants over three-year terms.
Scoping study on behalf of Strategic Business Advisors (Africa) to identify and characterize investments in agriculture, energy and infrastructure sectors in priority conservation areas in Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique (desk study).
Working with Thailand’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNP) and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS-Thailand), provided equipment and training for protected area personnel to adopt a smart system of patrolling in Salakpra Wildlife Sanctuary and, later, the adjoining national park (Chalerm Rattanakosin) and forest reserve (Srisawat). Supported patrols, data analysis, and system improvement. Assignment resulted in many more poachers caught and prosecuted, prey species numbers (notably deer and wild boar) increased and tigers recolonized Salakpra from Huai Kha Khaeng (around 150kms due north).
Preparation and provision of GIS data to facilitate program activities focusing on the designation of Taninthayi National Park, Lenya Wildlife Sanctuary, and the identification and designation of forest corridors connecting the two sites. Established a complete GIS database for Fauna and Flora International Myanmar program.
Conducted a series of activities for World Wide Fund for Nature Myanmar collating GIS data, mapping landuse, and holding stakeholder consultations to identify potential forest classifications in support of the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Forestry’s (MoECaF) commitment to realigning actual land uses with national landuse policies.
Provided GIS/mapping support to World Wide Fund for Nature Solomon Islands for the development of a GIS database. Spatially documented (using maps and tables) areas of biodiversity significance and conservation concern through analysis of existing and newly collected spatial data, satellite imagery and stakeholder involved data collection.
Undertaking systematic desk-based review of ~13,000 publications to extract information related to environmental impact of property rights in forests, fisheries and rangelands. On behalf of the Center for International Forest Research (CIFOR)
This community forest risked encroachment/degradation because there was no collective ownership and villagers did not realize its ecological and economic value. Assignment involved managing the initiative, raising funds and overseeing project planning, reporting, recruitment, awareness workshops, training villagers to map forest resources/use zones, assess productivity; agreeing a management system for harvesting and conservation plus identifying the rights, responsibilities and regulations of a sustainable forest use system. Outcome: the community forest was legally secured and managed sustainably by the village committee.
Establishing and under-taking an ongoing review of Indonesia’s National Moratorium on logging licenses for purposes of developing scenarios that more efficiently capture carbon stocks around existing land-use practices. Additionally developing GIS methods to link areas of deforestation to peat extraction specifically, with companies, their concessions and mills. Assignment in support of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Developing “rapid” GIS-based methods for assessment of the distribution of Myanmar’s least disturbed and highest biomass forests. Preparing government partners for implementation of efficient GIS processes to identify priority areas for forest management. Assignment in support of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Supported partner organization of World Wide Fund for Nature Sabah, Malaysia in facilitating expert workshop and performing data analysis using MARXAN Systematic Portfolio Assembly tool.
Reviewing Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI) led program and developing a strategy for project data management based around USAID standards for geospatial technologies.
A 2007 socio-economic survey revealed the dependency of villagers on forest products. Assignment involved initiating this project, overseeing recruitment, identification of local skills / enterprise ideas; planning workshops, study trips, creation of community groups, training in business planning / accounting / skills development, business plan preparation / grant application, legal registration, seed funding, monitoring and evaluation. Outcome: 12-groups , 5-villages, enterprises in mushroom growing, fruit drying, contract sewing, bamboo plantations, medicinal plants, organic vegetables, fish / frog ponds, chicken farming, jewellery making. The school also opened an income – generating recycling centre that is run by students to raise funds for a school shop.
Assignment involved overseeing preparation of elephant crop-raiding forms; training teams of village monitors to plot/measure all crop-raiding year-round; mapping land-use within 2kms of sanctuary; annual data analysis; socio-economic survey of Human Elephant Conflict (HEC)-affected/non-affected farmers/communities; local feedback meetings to present findings/discuss follow-up actions; eight crop-protection trials to identify the most cost-effective measure; monitoring electric fencing erected by government at our recommendation; testing the deployment of smart cameras to warn community guarding teams of elephants approaching crops; and overseeing three community HEC perception surveys. Outcome: HEC greatly reduced.
Employing participatory processes to facilitate the development of a landscape level management framework and programme of work within rural project sites in eastern Indonesia. Incorporating stakeholder engagement strategies development and implementation, collaborative environmental context review, setting of productive landscape principles and strategic direction, and project proposal development. Assignment in support of Birdlife (Burung) Indonesia.
Performing analysis to spatially account for the impact “Special Agriculture Business Leases” (SABLs) are having on the nation’s forests. Assignment in support Greenpeace Papua New Guinea. Analysis considered different landuse practices and accounted for carbon stocks based on Above Ground Biomass data.
Performing spatial analysis of Indonesia’s National Moratorium on logging licenses and developing methods for selecting areas to be included in plan based on carbon stocks. This project under the World Resources Institute (WRI) was implemented in support of, and in co-operation with, the Indonesia Ministry of Forestry and UKP4 (Office of the President of Indonesia). Results of the project were presented at COP 17, Durban, South Africa by a leading climate change scientist.
Assignment over an extended period, ending in 2011. Involved managing three seasonal forest surveys (cool, hot, wet seasons) in three elephant zones in the centre, south, west sides of Salakpra Wildlife Sanctuary using transects; two surveys in the forest reserve north of Salakpra to map the actual and potential routes for tigers and elephants to move between the wildlife sanctuary and national park beyond; one survey in the reserve adjoining eastern Salakpra to map its use by elephants. Outcomes of these surveys led to Dept. National Parks and Wildlife (DNP) introducing smart patrols to improve protection of Salakpra; forest reserves north and east of Salakpra area are becoming protected areas.
Working with the Forest Restoration Research Unit of Chiang Mai University (FORRU-CMU), Salakpra staff and community leaders, this assignment involved overseeing recruitment of local research team led by trained botanist to identify indigenous trees best able to accelerate forest regeneration on degraded land so as to restore forest in dry lowlands in/around Salakpra. Outcome included the establishment of nurseries in partner village and Salakpra, facilitation of seedling germination trials for 100+ tree species which were planted as saplings into degraded land and monitored monthly along with 350 marked trees (85spp) along a 3.5km phenology trail. Detailed manual produced in Thai.
Facilitating expert workshop and performing data analysis using the MARXAN Systematic Portfolio Assembly tool for World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Papua New Guinea.
Reviewing sustainable forest management participatory processes in the context of empowerment, poverty reduction and conservation project goals. Combining field observations and a desk-based review to develop recommendations for donors, project and field staff. Assignment in support of Birdlife (Burung) Indonesia.
Developing an identification (ID) field guide content for Komodo National Park Information Guide, including: marine fish and mammal species, terrestrial mammals, avian and reptile species, key habitats and conservation concerns. In support of Putri Naga Komodo (PNK).
Clients:
- Adventist Development & Relief Agency (ADRA) Timor-Leste
- AidenEnvironment
- Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC)
- Birdlife (Burung) Indonesia
- Borneo Nature Foundation (BNF)
- Cardno International Development USA
- Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
- Conservation Ecology Centre
- Conservation International
- Chemonics
- Chiang Mai University (CMU)
- Department of National Parks and Wildlife, Thailand
- Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH
- Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI)
- Elephant Conservation Network (ECN)
- Elephant Family (EF)
- Fauna & Flora International (FFI)
- Forest Carbon
- Forest Restoration Research Unit (FORRU)
- Green Infrastructure Center (GIC)
- Greenpeace Papua New Guinea
- Jane Goodall Institute
- National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC)
- Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC)
- Nature Conservancy for Sabah Forest Department
- Pangea Trust
- Publish What You Pay
- Putri Naga Komodo (PNK)
- Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)
- Rungan River Orangutan Conservation Programme (RROCP)
- Salakpra Wildlife Sanctuary (SWS)
- Starling Resources
- Strategic Business Advisors (SBA)
- Sumatran Orangutan Society (SOS)
- Tasmanian Land Conservancy (TLC)
- Tha Kradaan Community Organization (TKCO)
- The British Asian Trust
- Union of Concerned Scientists
- United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
- United States Forestry Service (USFS)
- Wildlife Conservation Network (WCN)
- World Resources Institute (WRI)
- World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Malaysia
- World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Myanmar
- World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Papua New Guinea
- World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Solomon Islands
- Yayasan Planet Indonesia (YPI)
- Zoological Society of London (ZSL)