Barita News Lumbanbatu, Sipahutar, Indonesia – On the Indonesian island of Sumatra lives a man named Efron Simanjuntak. With a stern face and thick, graying mustache, he roams the forests near the village of Bona ni Dolok. Once a player in the region's illegal logging industry, he's now a dedicated forest protector.
Efron, now 63, used to cut down trees illegally outside a nearby protected area. He also acted as a middleman, and his role was crucial in ensuring safety at the logging site, where he could earn several hundred dollars in a single operation, more than the annual pay at the minimum wage for this region.
Although he didn't wield a chainsaw himself, Efron played a key role in directing the work. He would go out with only a machete to mark and map out the trees to be felled. These were typically mature old giants: meranti (Shorea leprosula), Merkus or Sumatran pine (Pinus merkusii) and Monterrey pine (Pinus radiata). All were highly valued for the quality of their timber and their size. Efron could sell meranti, a popular substitute for teak, at up to $76 per cubic meter (about 18 cents per board foot), for which he'd get a cut of at least $6.
The process required stealth and precision, and carried risks, forcing Efron to navigate the dense forest and coordinate efforts to avoid accidents and maximize efficiency.
"The buyers usually came from Silakitang, Siborong-borong, before distributing it to other cities in North Sumatra, like Medan and Siantar," Efron says.
Then his luck ran out. In 2017, he was caught by police for selling Merkus and Monterrey pine resin along with teak and meranti timber from outside the protected area.
Efron's beginnings resemble those of many involved in the illegal logging industry. With only an elementary school education and no guarantee of a well-paying job, he frequently changed jobs and earned low wages, never venturing far from his place of birth. A native of the Batak Toba Indigenous group, Efron moved in 2007 to Bona ni Dolok, a new and unfamiliar village about seven hours' drive away. There, he began learning about the forest and how to make a living from its resources.
His plan was to continue his grandfather's legacy of owning and farming the land, he says, making a better life for his wife and then two children.
He began farming frankincense trees (Styrax benzoin), whose fragrant resin is the main commodity in North Tapanuli district. But frankincense can only be harvested from October to January, and the money provided little cover for the rest of the year. He even tried to harvest young frankincense that wasn't ready yet.
So Efron looked for another way to generate extra income: selling timber.
Finding a new path
Over the years, Efron slowly came to a realization. If the forest kept being cut down, the villagers' frankincense harvest would decrease. This is because frankincense trees need shade from other trees to produce plenty of resin to sell.
He began to feel indebted to his ancestors, he says. In the Batak Toba tradition, it's mandatory for each generation to preserve the family heritage, and frankincense holds significant cultural importance in the Indigenous group's tradition. Although Efron wasn't born in Bona ni Dolok, the land was his father's birthplace, and many of the Simanjuntak clan's descendants live here.
This awareness was a big turning point in Efron's life. So was his imprisonment for two years in 2018 for illegally selling forest products. It all led to the realization that the forest gave him life, he recalls, and the feeling that he must fight to preserve it for future generations.
He began learning about conservation and planted trees to replace those in the areas he knew had been cut down. "I feel responsible for restoring what I have damaged," he says.
Over the following years, he set to work on a personal mass reforestation campaign, planting mostly species that produce resin to sell for income, such as frankincense and pine. To date, he's planted 1,000 trees.
Becoming a leader
One day in 2020, as Efron went into the forest to tap frankincense, he was surprised to see new boundary markers reading, "Protected Forest Area – Do Not Disturb, State Property." He was shocked. As the 10th-generation descendent of the Simanjuntak clan, Efron says he couldn't accept it. Especially since the main source of income for the residents comes from frankincense resin, and he feared protected status would prevent them making an income.
He also worried that if the forest became state property, it could one day also become a plantation or mining concession. A similar situation happened at the nearby Huta Napa village, where a community forest was designated a protected area, which was then converted into eucalyptus plantation for the pulp and paper company Toba Pulp Lestari (TPL). Five other communities in North Tapanuli also shared concerns about the state forest boundary markers.
The community, Efron says, knew it could protect the forest on its own.
"I asked the Forestry Department staff, 'What is your basis for saying this is a protected forest? Our ancestors protected this forest, not you,'" he tells Mongabay.
To protect their income and show that the forest could be managed by the villagers, Efron encouraged other Batak Toba communities from surrounding villages to start planting tree seedlings too. They planted more frankincense, Merkus pine, economically valuable sugar palm (Arenga pinnata), fruit-bearing plants and other species.
Local communities across Indonesia have for generations protected ecosystems while deriving economic benefits from them, says Oding Affandi, a forestry lecturer at the University of North Sumatra. It's the same case with Efron and the Indigenous people of Bona ni Dolok, he tells Mongabay.
"Conservation practices by Indigenous people or the government must follow the applicable regulations, including the types of trees to be planted based on local wisdom in the conservation area," Oding says.
With the help of the Ancestral Domain Registration Agency (BRWA), established by a group of NGOs, and the Alliance of Indigenous Peoples of the Archipelago (AMAN), Indonesia's largest Indigenous coalition, Efron and his community pushed for the official recognition of the village's lands as a customary forest, and for the village itself as an Indigenous community.
The North Tapanuli district head at the time, Nikson Nababan, subsequently decreed 15,879 hectares (39,238 acres) of state forest into customary forest in 2023. This included 521 hectares (1,287 acres) of ancestral forest designated to the Bona ni Dolok community. The measure was capped on Aug. 9 this year, the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples, when Indonesian President Joko Widodo symbolically handed over the customary forest decree at a ceremony in Jakarta.
"The recognition of customary forests by the government is a positive step, but challenges remain, especially in dealing with climate change and industrial pressures," says Edward Siregar, chair of AMAN's North Tapanuli chapter.
To ensure the sustainability of conservation efforts, the Bona ni Dolok community developed a long-term plan that includes replanting, sustainable resource management, and environmental education for the younger generation.
"We want our children to understand the importance of protecting the forest," Efron says. "We do this not only for ourselves but also for their future."
New ways to make money
After he left the world of logging, Efron began growing various crops to increase his income: corn, coffee, oranges, chili peppers, tomatoes and various vegetables. He sells these at the weekly market, and although they don't pay as well as timber, the money is enough to meet his family's needs, he says.
At first, Efron had to balance his time between farming and tapping frankincense and pine resin in the forest. The family's frankincense trees number about 1,000. His wife and daughter worked in the fields and gardens, while Efron and his son tapped resin in the forest.
But with age his physical strength has begun to wane; he can no longer climb trees to tap frankincense. His son, John Simanjuntak, 29, now takes over that task.
"Frankincense has fed our family and sent me and my three siblings to school. Frankincense is our life," John says as he prepares to climb a frankincense tree to tap the resin. The family can earn the equivalent of about $45 a week from selling pine resin.
Efron also manages medicinal plants that grow in the forest. When it's not the harvest season for frankincense, he scrapes the trees to prepare their sap and introduces medicinal plants around the base of the trunks.
"This is called bijora," he says, showing a plant he's just pulled from the ground. "Its boiled water is drunk as a remedy for stomachaches."
A 2021 study revealed that bijora (Berberis bealei) contains natural chemicals like alkaloids, triterpenes, flavonoids, phytosterols and lignans, all of which exhibit antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antitumor and antioxidant properties.
According to AMAN, there are more than 30 types of plants in the region known to have medicinal properties to treat various ailments. Given the potential of the biodiversity and local wisdom, AMAN North Tapanuli is also assisting Efron to process herbal medicinal products at home.
"We will help financially, process them into liquid form, and package them in bottles," says Edward, the chapter head. "We will also help with marketing, at least for the market around the village of Bona ni Dolok."
Efron says Toba Pulp Lestari once offered to buy his land so that they could incorporate it into their industrial eucalyptus plantation. He refused the offer, he says, because the frankincense forest has always been the source of livelihood for the local people. According to civil society organizations, the company's plantation illegally overlaps with several protected forest areas and has reduced access to drinking water and irrigation for Huta Napa village's rice fields. Villagers from several villages also tell Mongabay they worry about the chemicals used at the plantation spreading to their farms on the wind.
A company spokesperson tells Mongabay that their inspections in the area have found the plantation complies with regulations on agrochemical use.
"If our forest becomes a plantation, it means the frankincense trees will be replaced with eucalyptus. They even offered cooperation, but we didn't want that," Efron tells Mongabay.
Today, when facing individuals who try to enter the village's territory for illegal logging, he's in a tough spot, Efron says. He blocks them from entering the customary forest, but fears the consequences of openly denouncing or naming them.
But he says he's unequivocal about protecting the community's customary forest: "The cultural heritage of our ancestors must be preserved."