How River Management Benefits Nature, Communities and Plantations
- Regular river maintenance is necessary to protect biodiversity, facilitate natural drainage and support local livelihoods
- The first step for each intervention is to consult with communities who may be affected to explain the plans and seek feedback
APRIL’s environment and water management teams continue to maintain the hydrological function of the more than 1.4 million hectares of landscape that APRIL manages, including the rivers and surrounding areas. As a result of their activities and collaborations with local communities, flooding has reduced, river flows are better regulated and stagnant water conditions have been cut significantly.
The aim is to balance operational efficiency with ecological sensitivity and community feedback.
This work has brought significant benefits. It creates healthier riparian and terrestrial ecosystems by supporting natural drainage patterns, reducing habitat stress, and enabling more resilient plant growth. Communities are benefitting too, from ongoing access to traditional fishing areas and improved mobility along river corridors while less flooding within APRIL’s concessions means healthier and more productive plantations.
Managing water flow through the landscape is crucial to its ecological health. Rivers serve as dynamic corridors and breeding grounds for biodiversity while helping moderate hydrological extremes such as floods and droughts.
Beyond these ecological services, rivers also support local livelihoods and socioeconomic functions – providing fisheries, enabling small-scale transport and travel, and serving as key resources for surrounding communities.
To safeguard these benefits, carefully-targeted river maintenance activities are necessary to facilitate balanced hydrological regulation across the landscape. These efforts help prevent prolonged stagnation, support the natural oxygen cycle, and mitigate the spread of invasive or fast-growing aquatic plants such as the pandanus and bakung lily.
Left unmanaged, these and other species can obstruct water channels, reducing dissolved oxygen levels, limiting sunlight penetration and disrupting native aquatic life.
Aldo Joson, Head of Sustainability Operations, APRIL Group, said: “The rivers in our concessions are critical to the overall wellbeing of the landscapes we manage. They help with groundwater recharge and sediment transport and play a crucial role in the lives of local communities. This is why we invest significant resources in managing these rivers and the surrounding areas”.
Consulting with communities
The first step before embarking on river maintenance activity is to engage with local communities. The Social Capital team organises sessions to consult with local residents about their needs, and to plan activities, set objectives and outline likely impacts. These sessions also enable community members to share concerns, local knowledge, and any other specific issues related to river use.
In several instances, river maintenance interventions have been in direct response to community requests, specifically when excessive vegetation or sedimentation has obstructed traditional fishing sites or made a waterway hard to navigate. All engagement efforts are carried out in coordination with local government authorities and in adherence to regulatory requirements, including formal approvals from the Bupati and the Dinas Lingkungan Hidup (Environmental Office).
Once agreed, maintenance plans often involve the systematic removal of overgrowth and debris – such as fallen branches – while safeguarding pre-identified High Conservation Value (HCV) areas and important fish breeding areas. APRIL’s team carries out assessments to delineate protection zones and appropriate risk mitigation strategies that prevent unintended ecological disturbance.
The outcome of these assessments is a site-specific river maintenance protocol in line with environmental permits, which classifies different segments of the waterway according to risk levels, leading to a differentiated suite of operational approaches.
In practice, this can mean that in sections of the river corridor with intact natural forest canopy, mechanical clearing using amphibious excavators and other heavy equipment is suspended in favour of manual methods that are less damaging to surrounding vegetation. Both the existing river width and the target maintenance corridor are defined and incorporated into the tailored operational plan for each river segment.
Meanwhile, debris extracted from the river is strategically relocated along the riverbank to minimise the potential for fire hazards during the dry season.
Through these proactive interventions, communities, nature and our sustainably managed plantations are realising tangible benefits from well-maintained river systems. Collaboration between those who depend on these vital water sources is sustaining landscape connectivity, and preserving ecosystem functions across natural forest and industrial plantation areas.
