The Rimba Raya Biodiversity Reserve REDD Project

monitoring program will continue to require specialized skills inthis area.Expertise and prior experience. As documented above (see SectionG3.8), OFI and World Education have an ongoing program, funded byUSAID, to promote conservation in and around Tanjung PutingNational Park. Since 2003, they have engaged the communitiessurrounding the park in informational meetings, educationalworkshops, capacity building and skills development, and conservationwork. In the process, they have disseminated information about theimportance of protecting the park and generated goodwill incommunities inside the Project Zone, laying a sturdy foundation forcontinued stakeholder engagement during project implementation.Both of these organizations will be intimately involved in projectimplementation.Gaps. Daemeter Consulting, an independent firm based in Bogor,Indonesia, and specializing in provision of technical services topromote responsible management of forest and agriculturallandscapes, was engaged during project development to conduct asocial survey, assess all Project Zone communities, and develop theRimba Raya community monitoring plan. Project proponents have anongoing relationship with Daemeter, and will continue to engage thisorganization on a regular basis to produce monitoring reports and asneeded to fill any gaps in technical expertise.Biodiversity AssessmentKey technical skills. The project will need the following technical skillsto assess and monitor biodiversity in the Project Zone. These skills willalso provide capacity to monitor changes in HCVs 1-­‐3 over time.Forest cover and condition mapping will be required in order tomonitor the success of the project in maintaining or improvingforest cover and condition during the project lifetime. Forest covermapping can be done adequately using conventional analysis ofreadily available remote sensing imagery (e.g. Landsat 5 and 7), butforest degradation mapping will require development ofspecialized techniques, extensive ground surveys or high (sub-­meter)resolution aerial photographic data. This will require acombination of GIS, remote sensing, and field survey skills todescribe forest condition classes.Ecosystem mapping will be required to refine the currentunderstanding and delineation of ecosystem types in the ProjectZone. This will enable improvements to carbon estimation;description of flora and fauna known or likely to be present;population estimation of rare, threatened, or endemic/restricted-­rangespecies (especially wetland specialist birds); anddevelopment of more detailed management activities to ensurelong-­‐term conservation of ecosystem and associated biodiversity.Ecosystem mapping will require a combination of GIS, remotesensing, and field survey skills to describe vegetation typesincluding diagnostic species assemblages and structural attributes.Botanical Survey skills will be required to document more fully thediversity of plant species present in the Project Zone, which to datehas not been formally surveyed. The area likely shares manyspecies in common with nearby Tanjung Puting, but direct surveywill still be required in order to provide a baseline for ongoingmonitoring, as well as to confirm the presence of species ofconservation importance considered potentially present. Botanicalsurveys should focus on the documentation and where possiblepopulation estimation of HCV 1.2 and 1.3 species (see Tables 10 –189