A multinational team of ecologists and social scientists has concluded that a 2024 corporate takeover in Indonesian Borneo was followed by a dramatic fall in sightings of an endemic small wildcat, the tilicay, and that the decline is linked in part to new AI‑driven land‑management deployed by the merged company.
The paper, published in the journal Tropical Conservation on 22 September, monitored the tilicay across West Kalimantan between 2022 and 2025 and overlays those data with land‑use changes after the merger that created Nusakita Agro — the IDR 37 trillion (about €2.2 billion) deal that combined two major palm and pulp groups into a single operator.
How the researchers reached this
Researchers used a network of camera traps, genetic scat analysis and high‑resolution satellite imagery to trace the tilicay's distribution before and after Nusakita's consolidation of concessions. The team mapped 120,000 hectares of previously mixed forest and smallholder mosaics that were reorganised into contiguous blocks of monoculture between mid‑2024 and late 2025, reducing riparian buffers and forest edges the tilicay uses for foraging and cover.
The study reports a 78% drop in camera‑trap detection rates for tilicay across study sites and estimates a sharp loss of viable subpopulations where habitat patches fell below an ecological threshold of roughly 500 hectares. The authors link much of the landscape reorganisation to an internal optimisation platform Nusakita licensed from an overseas firm, which the paper says prioritised economic yield and travel‑time reductions for harvest fleets over fine‑grained ecological corridors.
Company defence and AI's role
Nusakita dismissed the study's causal language in a statement, saying the company "operates within Indonesian law, maintains conservation set‑asides and continues to fund biodiversity monitoring." CEO Rafiq Hasari said the firm's optimisation tools had saved fuel and reduced staff time, and that any changes to plantation layout were cleared with provincial authorities. "Our systems help farmers and workers; they are not designed to target wildlife," he said.
We watched a species vanish in real time.
Tobiloba Gbadamosi, conservation scientist
Independent ecologist Vince Adams, a co‑author of the paper, said the issue was not only raw clearing but the way algorithmic decisions concentrated remaining habitat into isolated blocks. "The AI made perfectly logical efficiency choices — straightening harvest roads, shortening haul distances — but those choices fragment the landscape," he said. Adams added that proprietary restrictions on the optimisation software made it impossible for regulators or independent scientists to audit decision rules before they were deployed.
Government and next steps
Indonesia's Ministry of Environment and Forestry said it had received the paper and would review permits for landscape reorganisation and any approvals given to optimisation platforms. "We will ask Nusakita for full algorithms and concession change logs under administrative review," a ministry spokesperson told reporters. The ministry also said it would convene an expert panel by 30 September to assess immediate mitigation measures.
Ilinca G. Pintea, who leads a policy centre that advises ASEAN governments on algorithmic transparency, said the paper should trigger regulatory updates. "When private code determines the shape of forests, we need disclosure and conditional approvals — the public interest is at stake," she said. Local communities interviewed for the study described sudden changes in hunting and foraging patterns; Miran Rus, a village head in an affected district, said families lost fruit trees and small fishing pools when drainage was reorganised. Ruth Mphahlele of an Indonesian NGO warned that without rapid restoration the tilicay could be functionally extinct across large parts of its former range, with knock‑on effects for local livelihoods and tourism.
The researchers recommended an immediate moratorium on further landscape reorganisation in the study area, an independent audit of optimisation systems used by plantation operators, and a programme to reconnect fragmented habitat patches. Nusakita said it would consider recommendations but warned that any prolonged moratorium could have economic consequences for workers. Parliamentarians have scheduled a hearing on corporate environmental controls for 30 September. Conservationists hope the study will push international financiers and buyers to demand algorithmic transparency before renewing contracts with plantation groups.
