In this captivating short film from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Indonesian conservation biologist Yoki Hadiprakarsa and the US wildlife photographer Tim Laman travel across Indonesia – from Sumatra to Borneo, and east to Papua – in search of hornbills. Known as ‘the farmers of the forest’, these birds disperse tens of thousands of seeds each year, helping to regenerate one of the world’s largest rainforest regions. With sweeping nature shots and intimate encounters with several of Indonesia’s 13 hornbill species, the film shows how the stewardship of local communities, supported by regional government and civil-society groups, has created a rare landscape where hornbills still thrive in numbers not seen elsewhere, allowing these seasoned specialists to witness behaviour rarely recorded before.
Altogether, the film nudges viewers away from seeing nature only in terms of what it offers humans, instead revealing a rainforest whose beauty and vitality merit protection in their own right. As Hadiprakarsa reflects: ‘When nature thrives, we all thrive.’
