Menjangan Island is an uninhabited and sacred island with luxuriant coral reefs, lying just off Bali’s northwest coast. It sits within the Bali Barat National Park. However, these reefs are suffering increasingly from dynamite fishing, poorly managed tourism and climate change.

Biosphere Foundation has committed to a long-term conservation and education program to enhance the conservation of Menjangan Island’s coral reefs. Over time, the aim is to build sufficient capacity for the monitoring and management of this precious natural resource and to prevent the collapse of a spectacular coral reef.


The long-term goals include:

· SOUND SCIENCE - to collect the first of annual data sets from the reefs of Menjangan Island. This data analsysis will provide a solid scientific basis for enforcing existing regulations.

· SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION - to train one or more Indonesian marine graduate student(s) in-water to become part of the on-going reef monitoring team.

· COMMUNITY EDUCATION - to make first steps towards designing and implementing a coral reef education program within the local communities which could eventually include a showcase coral reef educational center on Menjangan Island itself.

· ECONOMIC SECURITY - to support the economic livelihoods of the local communities by conserving marine biodiversity and ecological goods and to avoid the costs of ecological restoration in the future.

· BUILDING CAPACITY - to build on ‘Friends of the Reef,’ a conservation program initiated by WWF that greatly encouraged local stakeholder participation and environmental education.

· MPA NETWORKING - to start to incorporate Menjangan Island into a network of Marine Protected Areas throughout the Indonesian Archipelago and Coral Triangle eco-region.

BF is working in collaboration with the following conservation partners to achieve these goals :

· Bali Barat National Park
· Menjangan Resort
· Dustan Lab, College of Charleston
· LIPI, Indonesian Institute of Sciences