John,

Right now Sarawak’s native forests are being torn down to make way for a giant monoculture plantation of bamboo — a project that could devastate ecosystems and local communities for generations to come.

The forests are home to the Kayan, Kenyah, Lahanan, Ukit and Penan Indigenous communities who have cared for the land for generations. Now, plantation giant Rich Venture is completely disregarding their land rights and failing to properly consult them.

Rich Venture just wants to get rich and doesn’t care what it destroys along the way. Earlier this year, bulldozers began tearing down Sarawak’s native forests—and the destruction is just going to ramp up.

But Indigenous communities are fighting back. They’re in talks with the Sarawak Government and hoping to meet with the Premier very soon. We must act fast to back them and shine a global spotlight on this devastation—before even more of their ancestral forests are lost.

Sign the petition: tell Rich Venture to stop the bamboo plantation and compensate local communities.

These communities have already faced injustices. In the 1990s the construction of a mega-dam flooded 15 villages, displacing more than 9,000 people.

And now Rich Venture wants to cut down swathes of the remaining native forest on the banks of the dam which will result in erosion and sediment runoff which could flow straight into the Bakun Reservoir–threatening the water quality, fisheries and food security for locals.

Endangered species like gibbons, clouded leopards and hornbills are also at risk of losing their habitats to over 28,000 football fields of bamboo which won’t provide any food or shelter to the native animals already struggling to survive.

Local communities have asked Rich Venture that they be properly consulted and have access to management plans and environmental impact assessments but their requests have been completely disregarded.

Add your name to the petition and help the Indigenous communities in Sarawak protect their native forests.

Together we’ve taken on big corporations destroying forests and won. We supported Forest Defenders fighting to stop palm oil giant Sin Heng Chan from destroying the Ulu Belaga forest–and a moratorium on new forest clearing has just been put in place!

Let’s do it again and stop Rich Venture’s monoculture bamboo plantation.