The EFForTS Symposium – presenting our research on oil palm management practices and riparian restoration at a conference in Bali

January 22, 2019,

In October 2018, Insect Ecology group members Sarah Luke and Michael Pashkevich attended the “Socio-ecological Transformations of Tropical Lowland Rainforest” International Symposium, in Bali, Indonesia. The symposium was organised by researchers from the “Ecological and Socioeconomic Functions of Tropical Lowland Rainforest Transformation Systems (Sumatra, Indonesia)” Project (EFForTS Project) – https://bit.ly/2Q1lL5f

Welcome to the conference! The banner at the entrance to the conference which illustrated the interdisciplinary nature of the EFForTS Project and the symposium.

EFForTS is a large, highly collaborative project which is based in the neighbouring province to where our group’s BEFTA Programme research is based. They are also investigating questions relating to oil palm sustainability, and so it was very interesting to hear more about their work, and to meet researchers within their project. In particular, we met several new students who had recently started working on the EFForTS project, as well as a large number of Indonesian scientists who we had not had the opportunity to meet before.

An attentive audience. The conference was attended by a large number of Indonesian scientists and policy makers, as well as scientists who had travelled from Europe.

The symposium included three full days of talks and poster sessions, and both Sarah and Michael gave presentations on their work within the BEFTA Programme – http://oilpalmbiodiversity.com/. On the final day there were field trips around Bali, and Sarah visited West Bali National Park for the first time – an area of savanna, mangroves, and mixed forest in the north-western tip of the island.

  • Michael Pashkevich explaining his work surveying spiders within riparian buffers.
  • Sarah Luke explaining our new experiment that is testing strategies for riparian buffer restoration in oil palm plantations.
Field trip to the West Bali National Park. Sarah joined one of the field trips that were organised as part of the conference, and spent a day exploring the forest and mangroves in the north western-most corner of Bali.

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