Let's meet Jekie, a 39-year-old man from Karuing village, Kamipang, located in Katingan district, Central Kalimantan. Since he was a teenager, his youth was filled with activities in and out of the forest to cut down trees (illegal logging). The wood he cut down was then sold to make ends meet. Cutting down the forest was a common activity for the local community at that time.

But since the issuance of Government Regulation No. 44/2004 on Forestry Planning, Jekie's logging activities were stopped around 2005. This was not easy to do considering that cutting down trees in the forest was Jekie's main source of livelihood. But for fear of legal sanctions, Jekie turned to fishing around the Punggu Alas and Katingan rivers.

When several organizations conducted awareness programs in the community, driven by curiosity, Jekie tried to participate in these activities. One of the activities that Jekie participated in was a community awareness and empowerment study conducted by the local government supported by the WWF Indonesia Foundation in Karuing village. For example, with proper fishing practices, the source of fish in the river is maintained and livelihoods are guaranteed.

As time went by, Jekie gradually began to understand the importance of protecting the environment. It turned out that the tree cutting activities that had been carried out were bad for the environment and unsustainable. She also took an active role as a villager in expressing her opinion in discussions in her village, for example in preventing unsustainable fishing practices, participating in fire prevention patrols as a member of the Fire Care Community (MPA) around the Katingan and Sebangau rivers during the dry season, and being active as a villager in flood management activities in her village during the rainy season. Jekie also participates in vegetable and kelulut honey farming activities.

There are better things than just taking what is in nature, such as environmental services that have great potential for the long term, for example, ecotourism. This is what attracted Jekie to participate when the Keruing Village Tourism Hub was established, and it's no wonder that Jekie was chosen by the community to be its chairperson in 2010.

The Keruing Village Tourism Hub cooperates with the Sebangau National Park Office in the form of managing two units of lodging facilities in Punggu Alas and managing natural tourism services in Punggu Alas which include activities to provide transportation facilities for kelotok ces / small kelotok and canoes, providing food and drinks, providing tour guides or guides, providing souvenirs; providing local cultural arts attractions / traditional welcoming, and providing porter services. Development of ecotourism, especially in the Punggualas Area with special tourism selling points of wild orangutan observation, river cruising, native tropical forest cruising and bird watching and observation of Borneo's endemic wildlife (https://www.menlhk.go.id/site/single_post/357).

Jekie said, "Why destroy the environment and get penalized if by protecting and coexisting with nature we can benefit from it". Despite her intention to resign, the community continues to support Jekie as chairperson of the Karuing Village Tourism Hub.

In this pandemic era, it certainly has an impact on the activities of the Karuing Village Tourism Hub, although ecotourism assistance activities have decreased, Jekie's intention to protect the environment has never subsided. According to Jekie, what causes people to be careless and carry out unsustainable natural resource extraction practices is a lack of knowledge, if the community knows that there are more useful things, of course all people will support it, for this reason Jekie continues to strive to play an active role in her village in community awareness for sustainable use of natural resources.