Okay, here we go, my first blog, ever. I've already done some trash talking with my friend Kieran Mulvaney, who prides himself on his blogging abilities - so let's hope that I can pull off an interesting and informative blog.

I'm now sitting at our not quite complete Forest Defenders Camp in Riau Province, Sumatra, Indonesia. And I'm exhausted from a very long day of hard work.

What would possess someone to spend 5 days traveling, with almost no sleep, enduring 40 straight hours of spending time in airports and on airplanes, followed my more airplanes, followed by a death defying drive across Riau Province, to arrive at a town that is still a 3 hour boat ride away from the camp? To save the Peatland Forests, of course.

The peatland forests need to be saved, but not just to protect all the cute little (and huge) creatures in it. They actually need to be saved to save us, humans. Peatland forests are an enormous carbon store. And these forests are being converted to oil palm plantations at an alarming rate. And when this conversion occurs, they burn the peatland forest and all that carbon that has been stored is released into the atmosphere as a Greenhouse Gas, Carbon Dioxide. This forest conversion has helped to propel Indonesia into third place in Greenhouse Gas emitters, behind the world's largest polluters, China and the United States. I find that fact staggering, considering that Indonesia isn't a huge fossil fuel hog, like its co-polluters. Who knew that saving our forests could be just as important as switching to clean energy when it comes to stopping Global Warming?

So now you know why we're here. Now let me tell you a little about what the camp is like. First of all, it's hot. Really hot. They say it's been getting up into the low to mid 40's. So that's well over 100 degrees. And did I mention the humidity? It's not easy building a camp in this kind of heat. But I can't complain too much, I've only been here one day. And it was a very long day, with lots of work. I helped install the solar array, and we finally got power to the camp, thanks to the sun, and a lot of hard work. I'm writing this email now using some of the energy we produced after 1pm, when we finally got all the wires wired (and narrowly avoided a 6 inch long scorpion, which decided to hang out behind our battery bank.)

The camp is coming together, though we still have a ways to go. We have the main meeting house and bunk quarters nearly complete. We got the roof on our kitchen today, and our fire-spotting tower got a little taller. We also now have solar power, as I mentioned earlier, and tomorrow we'll get our water tank installed, make our solar installation more permanent, and keep plugging away on the buildings to get them finished.

It's Ramadhan, and most people are about to break fast. In other words, it's time for dinner. I'll keep the updates coming as the camp progresses, and hopefully send along some photos of our progress. And remember, when the camp is finished, that is when our real work begins. I have many more stories to tell, just from my first few days (did I mention that my bag still hasn't arrived at the airport?) but it's already been a 13 hour work day, so I think I'll call it a day.

Hayden