Harisyah grows palm oil and pineapple. He learned about mangroves almost by accident, at an aquaculture course in the Meranti Islands in 2011, where someone explained how the trees filter brackish water for fish and shrimp ponds. The shoreline he knew had been stripped twice over — first by the charcoal kilns that fed on the dense wood of Rhizophora, then by the spread of oil palm. Without the trees, the wind comes in unbroken and the tides flood the village.
He began visiting restoration groups across Siak district, gathering volunteers. Elected village head in 2018, he finally had the instrument he needed: Indonesian village heads control an annual transfer from the central government, and he pointed it at the coast, securing some 10,000 seedlings from the environmental agency. Then he lost his reelection, and the money went elsewhere. The work stopped.
In 2024 he found his way back to it, reconnecting with Yayasan Gambut, the Malaysia-based Global Environment Centre and Aramco Asia Singapore. The planting at Beting Selayang targets about 25 hectares of ground where the mangroves had vanished entirely. He intends to make the site do double duty. "We're going to use this location as a nursery for the new seedlings," he said.
What determines whether any of it survives is not the planting day but the two or three years afterwards — the weeding, the staking, the patient correction of a seedling that has settled at the wrong height for the tide. Across Southeast Asia, replanting schemes fail routinely for want of exactly that attention. Harisyah is supplying it himself, in the hours after his own fields are done.
Fishers along the shore have started to mention that the near-shore catch feels better than it did. It is anecdote, not measurement, and the seedlings remain fragile. Local officials are drafting regulations to protect what mangroves remain and to deal with the river's pollution.
We keep going. Even if you're by yourself, keep going.