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Feature Story
reed magazine logoAutumn 2007
Dr. Kinari Webb at clinic

Dr. Kinari Webb ‘95 opened a primary care health clinic in a remote corner of Borneo this summer. Her appointment book has been full ever since.

It takes (at least) a village to save a rain forest

Words and pictures By Oakley brooks

At her new rural health clinic, Dr. Kinari Webb
’95 doesn’t give the Indonesian villagers health
care for free. Instead,they pay for it by
working to save the national park nearby.

Gunung Palung National Park, in the south- west reaches of the Indonesian section of Borneo, tumbles from a cloud-forested ridge of volcanoes at 3,700 feet down through old-growth hardwoods to mangrove swamps that line the Java Sea. It hosts one of Indonesia’s largest populations of the wide-ranging and highly endangered orangutan. While much of the lowland forest in the park has been hacked by illegal loggers, at dusk it’s still possible for swimmers and fishermen along the coast to hear the deep-throated cries of monkeys and gibbons in the tall trees nearby. 

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reed magazine logoAutumn 2007