Effect of canal blocking on biodiversity of degraded peatlands: Insight from West Kalimantan

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0334014 October 8, 2025 1 / 23 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Imron MA, Rachmawati FD, Dewi T, Albihad D, Simanullang GMI, Poor EE (2025) Effect of canal blocking on biodiversity of degraded peatlands: Insight from West Kalimantan. PLoS One 20(10): e0334014. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0334014 Editor: Muammar Qadafi, National Research and Innovation Agency, INDONESIA Received: April 20, 2025 Accepted: September 20, 2025 Published: October 8, 2025 Copyright: © 2025 Imron et al . This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data availability statement: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files. Funding: Contract REF: SCI_NCSCobenefits_ UnivGadjahMada_20221018 Project ID: P121337-F106876 Project Name: SCI Natural Climate Solutions Co-benefits The Nature RESEARCH ARTICLE Effect of canal blocking on biodiversity of degraded peatlands: Insight from West Kalimantan Muhammad Ali Imron 1,2*, Farah Dini Rachmawati3, Tungga Dewi 3, Dennis Albihad3, Giot Marganti Ito Simanullang3, Erin E. Poor 4 1 Faculty of Forestry, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Jalan Agro Bulaksumur, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 2 WWF Indonesia, Forest and Wildlife Directorate, Jalan TB Simatupang Kv 38, Jakarta Selatan, Indonesia, 3 Lembaga JAWI Indonesia, Gedongkiwo MJ.I/848, Mantrijeron, Yogyakarta, Yogyakarta Special Region,

Indonesia, 4 Tackle Climate Change, The Nature Conservancy, North Fairfax Drive, Suite 100, Arlington, Virginia, United States of America * maimron@ugm.ac.id Abstract Large-scale disturbance in peatland areas causes many wildlife species to suffer due to limited resources or habitat loss. Following the high attention to peatlands, some restoration efforts, such as canal blocking, have been undertaken to restore the hydro- logical condition of peatlands. Nonetheless, our understanding of peatland biodiversity post-canal blocking is still limited. Thus, we conducted a study in West Kalimantan to assess wildlife diversity in peatland rewetting areas and understand the canal block- ing’s impact on peatland biodiversity. Surveys were conducted during both the wet and dry seasons using line transects and point counts, along with deploying autonomous recording units in four habitat types: less disturbed peat forest, disturbed peat forest, estate crop, and disturbed wet shrub. Shannon and Simpson diversity indices suggest that habitats with complex structures (i.e., forested habitat) support higher diversity compared to those with open and uniform vegetation (i.e., non-forested habitat). This notion is also supported by acoustic indices calculations, which indicate that forested areas show higher acoustic diversity (biophony), and thus higher biodiversity compared to non-forested areas. However, our results indicate that there is insufficient evidence to suggest the effect of canal blocking on wildlife diversity in all rewetting sites. Aligning

biodiversity conservation efforts with the natural climate solutions hierarchy, which is part of nature-based solutions and consists of protect, manage, and restore, could offer promising solutions for recovering the sites. Introduction Global peatlands may only hold three per cent of global land, yet it stores approx- imately 25% of the world’s soil carbon [1,2], and contribute a critical role in