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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The forest around Manjau in Borneo once reverberated with the scream of chainsaws, as gangs of illegal loggers felled ancient hardwood trees for sale to timber merchants downstream.

But many loggers in the remote Indonesian village are hanging up their chainsaws in return for affordable healthcare, through a community incentive scheme that aims to save lives and protect Borneo's fragile rainforests.

This strategy is set to be rolled out elsewhere in Indonesia, where impoverished communities often reliant on illegal industries for survival are putting enormous strain on the environment.

In western Borneo, where the approach was first pioneered, logging had long been the lifeblood of many communities, providing quick cash whenever it was desperately needed for weddings or health emergencies

A single Bornean ironwood—a rare, slow-growing giant prized for its durable timber—could fetch hundreds of dollars at a lumber mill, a small fortune for local villagers.

But for Juliansyah, a father-of-two from Manjau, the income was unreliable and the work—often involving days-long missions alone in the forest—was tiring and dangerous.

[...] His village was eventually approached by Alam Sehat Lestari (ASRI), a non-profit organisation based in nearby Sukadana and made an unusual offer.

If they agreed to cease logging, the entire village would be granted discounts on medical bills at the local health clinic, and free training for new careers as forest custodians and farmers.

The incentives have worked, says American physician Kinari Webb, who co-founded ASRI and established Oregon-based charity Health in Harmony, its key financial backer.

Of the 24 villages surrounding Gunung Palung, all but one have agreed to put down their chainsaws, Webb said. Since 2007, when ASRI started working with villages, the number of logging households has plunged from nearly 1,400 to 180.

The rampant destruction of the old-growth forest Webb encountered when she first arrived in western Borneo 22 years ago has slowed to a trickle, with degraded areas slowly regrowing.

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