Before dawn breaks over the forests surrounding Sembuak Village in Malinau, North Kalimantan, the hunters of Dayak Abay Sembuak customary community prepares to enter the forest much like their ancestors did generations ago.

They move quietly beneath the trees, reading signs that most people would miss entirely. A bird call in the distance. The direction of the wind. The silence or movement of the canopy overhead. Before deciding where to go, they pay attention to the sounds of birds, believed to signal whether a path ahead will bring danger, or good fortune. 

For generations, this knowledge has guided Dayak Abay Sembuak people through the forest while teaching them how to live alongside it.

Long before biodiversity and climate action became part of global agenda, the Dayak Abay Sembuak customary community had already been protecting the forests surrounding Sembuak Village through ways of life shaped by a deep understanding of nature. Living alongside the forest since before Indonesia’s independence, the community has grown with it over time, making the forest inseparable from their identity, survival, and way of life.

The forest provides nearly everything the community needs to live. Medicines grow along forest trails. Rivers feed families with fish, while hunting grounds provide enough for daily needs. Rattan once fulfilled what Indonesians describe as sandang, pangan, papan, serving as a source of clothing, food, and shelter.

“We only take what is enough,” says Stefanus Sidung, one of the community’s customary elders.

Even though Dayak Abay community has long lived as hunters and fishers, the forest was never seen as something to conquer. People take from it carefully, knowing that the forest can continue feeding them only if it is given time to recover. Hunters avoid entering the same areas at the same time, allowing wildlife to return naturally. Fish and game caught from the forest are rarely sold outside the village because taking more than what is needed is believed to upset the balance of nature itself. 

For Dayak Abay people, the forest is alive. It listens to how humans treat it, and in return, decides whether it will continue providing for those who live within it.

Pai Gapon Wtu Lonom

For much of his life, Stefanus remembers the Sembuak River as a place of abundance.

He recalls stopping at his small hut near the riverbank while fishing native fishes such as Pelian fish (Tor Douronensis) and Baung fish (Hemibagrus Nemuru) in the forest. He would light a fire to boil water, walk down to the river with his fishing gear, and return with fish before the water had even finished boiling.

Today, those moments have become memories.

Finding fish now takes far longer than it once did. According to Stefanus, changing habits and modern technology are beginning to disrupt the balance that customary practices once protected.

Some people now use machines and diving headlamps to fish at night because it is faster and easier.

“In our culture, there is a saying: ‘pai gapon wtu lonom’, which means do not fish at night,” Stefanus explains. “And it was never just a saying.”

The community understood that nighttime is when fish rest and reproduce. Catching them during those hours interrupts breeding cycles and gradually reduces fish populations in the river. What may appear to outsiders as superstition or simple tradition is, in reality, knowledge built from living closely with the river and understanding its rhythms over time.

“There is nothing wrong with the forest,” Stefanus says quietly. “Humans create the problems.”

The impacts are becoming harder to ignore. Temperatures are rising. Rivers are changing. Wildlife is more difficult to find than before. For Dayak Abay Sembuak community, these changes are not measured through reports or statistics, but through everyday experience. They are felt in the heat of the afternoon, in the silence of certain forest areas, and in the growing difficulty of finding fish that once filled the river so easily.

For the community, biodiversity is deeply tied to culture and memory. Losing the forest would mean losing not only wildlife and plants, but also medicinal knowledge, customary practices, and ways of understanding the natural world.

“Perhaps if the forest disappears, many things will disappear too,” Stefanus reflects. “Not only the medicines found in the forest, but also our culture, our knowledge, and the things that make us who we are. All of that could disappear with it.”

Learning from Mistakes

Customary communities don't learn from perfection; they learn from mistakes. From crop failures, droughts, floods, declining animals’ populations, and even from unpredictable seasonal changes. Their ecological knowledge develops from long experience involving hundreds of mistakes and failures. Their knowledge is passed down from generation to generation.

In a modern world that often relies on instant solutions, this approach feels unfamiliar, but therein lies its strength. One of the most important lessons is the concept of "limiting" desires. The measure is ‘needs’, not ‘desires.’ Many customary communities have unwritten rules, and sometimes rituals, that govern when and how natural resources may be used, and when they must be left to recover.

There are always places set aside, and times when the forest is not meant to be touched. For hunting and harvesting, certain areas are cared for in ways that allow nature to rest and regenerate, while the landscape is often understood in spatial patterns that help sustain balance over time. 

These practices are ways of guiding how people relate to the natural world and how nature is given space to renew itself. They reflect an understanding—though not always expressed in modern ecological terms—that resources are not unlimited, and that every ecosystem has its own threshold of renewal. When those limits are stretched too far, the consequences are eventually felt by people as well. From this understanding grows a quiet principle: that human desire, too, must learn to stay within limits.

Protecting the Forest through Recognition

Today, Dayak Abay Sembuak community continues protecting its forest not only through customary practices, but also by seeking formal recognition of its customary territory. 

UNDP, with support from the Government of Norway, is working with the Government of Indonesia to accelerate the recognition of 1.4 million hectares of customary forests (Hutan Adat) across the country by 2029. For communities like Dayak Abay, legal recognition is important to strengthen their ability to protect the forest from destructive activities and preserve the ecosystems that have sustained them for so long.

In Sembuak Village, the forest and its biodiversity are not seen as something separate from people. They are part of everyday life, shaped by customary knowledge that understands humans, rivers, wildlife, and forests as deeply connected to one another.

On the International Day for Biological Diversity, the story of the Dayak Abay customary community reminds us that protecting biodiversity is not only about conserving nature, but also about sustaining the relationship between people and the ecosystems they have lived alongside for centuries.