Fuze Ecoteer – Connecting People with Nature in Malaysia

Organization Name: Fuze Ecoteer
Contact: daniel@fuze-ecoteer.com
Website: Fuze Ecoteer

Tell Us About Your Organization

Fuze Ecoteer is a conservation and volunteer organization in Malaysia. The organization assists with the learning and support of locals regarding various important environmental projects. Currently, the organization is leading four conservation projects and supporting two independent NGOs. Each project aims to create eco-educational programs for both students and adults to positively impact the environment.

Daniel Quilter founded Fuze Ecoteer, who combined a UK Social Enterprise Voluntourism project called Ecoteer with Fuze, a private company focused on adventure and eco-tourism. As a result, Fuze-Ecoteer was born as a Social Eco Travel Enterprise with one intention, to connect people to nature.

Fuze-Ecoteer runs three projects that focus on community engagement, sea turtle conservation, marine conservation and rainforest research, and wildlife rescue. They invite volunteers from all over the work to believe in shared knowledge and ideas to better the projects.

Location

Fuze-Ecoteer is located in Malaysia and also has one project in Jogjakarta. The four main projects run by Fuze-Ecoteer exist on the Perhentian Islands, which are just east of Malaysia between Kelantan and Terengganu. The organization works alongside five projects which focus on the following locations:

1. Perhentian Turtle Project – Based at Teluk Pauh seagrass bed in the Perhentian Islands Marine Park. This project aims to assess the number of turtles and their life stage, which forage at Teluk Pauh to provide management recommendations. This includes monitoring the number of females nesting, the hatching success rate, and the pattern of seat turtle stranding.
2. Perhentian Marine Research Station – Based at the Village Reef of Perhentian Islands. This project aims to develop a reef mapping methodology for preliminary reef assessment while also educating locals by conducting beach clean-ups.
3. Kayu Ara Project – Based along the Kayu Ara River, this project aims to develop replicable and scalable self-funded projects that remove solid waste from water bodies. These actions benefit the locals who live along the river and the fauna and flora.
4. Perhentian Eco-Education Project – Based on the islands, the purpose is to educate young children by raising environmental awareness for locals and on-site tourists who collaborate with Fuze-Ecoteer activities.

Outside of their four direct projects. Fuze-Ecoteer also works with the following projects:

1. Malaysian Rainforest Station – Focusing on ecological and behavioural studies of flying squirrels.
2. Wildlife Rescue Centre Jogja – Focusing on animal rescue in the Jogja region.

Vision and long term objective

The vision of Fuze-Ecoteer is to help people connect with each other and nature. Their mission is to create positive impacts for wildlife and communities through internationally recognized projects in South East Asia. All these projects have the sole intention of connecting people with nature.

The Community and Conservation projects are funded by voluntourism and group programs. They aim to provide our volunteers with meaningful experiences, opportunities to learn, and the chance to make a difference.

Fuze-Ecoteer intends to bring as many benefits as possible to their host communities and the environment that surrounds them. By carefully working on five mutually beneficial projects, they have been able to successfully preserve a small community in Malaysia with the hopes of spreading this influence to further regions within the country.

Who We Are

Fuze Ecoteer is a Malaysian-based team run by company director Daniel Quilter. Registered with MOTAC, conservation and adventure are at the core of its work; we work on projects that connect people with nature! Many of our sales and marketing team are locally-based individuals who have grown up understanding the importance of their beautiful natural surroundings. Preservation of this rare fauna and flora is key. We are driving the change of our local community to have this forward-thinking approach also. It’s important to preserve the land for our future generations to come!

Fuze-Ecoteer operates with two principles in mind:

1. Be humble but confident. It’s essential to listen to everyone. Listening allows us to take action based on people’s direct needs. It means we can be confident that we are moving in the right direction when making a change.
2. Caring. We care about the environment, the local communities we work with, and of course, our volunteers. You are the ones that help make an even more significant impact after all!

How can people help/volunteer with you?

Fuze-Ecoteer offers two volunteer programs with Perhentian Marine Research Station and Perhentian Turtle Project.

• Perhentian Marine Research Station

Volunteering with the PMRS means you’ll be looking into one or multiple of the following project areas:

Coral Rehabilitation – Here, you’ll learn the method of developing artificial reefs and coral nurseries to regenerate and restore the natural reef ecosystem.

Elasmobranch Monitoring – Here you’ll assist with establishing new elasmobranch monitoring schemes. With camera straps, you’ll  dive and investigate shark and ray species found around the Perhentian islands while collecting their population and distribution data.

Reef Diversity Monitoring – Here you’ll use Reef Check surveying to help with ongoing monitoring of the coral reef health.

Seagrass Monitoring – You’ll collect data that will be analyzed alongside other seagrass beds around the world.

Diving – If you aren’t diving qualified… you soon will be! We’ll work with the local diving school to train you up in one week, so you have the option to become an open-water or even advanced open-water diver.

Waste Management – An essential part of our work. You’ll educate locals and tourists to ensure that the waste management system on the island is both perfected and sustainable.

Beach Clean Ups – Volunteers will help us with our beach clean-ups and sort the trash according to recyclable categories.

• Perhentian Turtle Project

The Perhentian Turtle Project is based in two locations, Kampung Pasir Hantu in Perhential Kecil and Pantai Tiga Ruang in Perhentian Besar. Volunteer activities can include a number of the following:

Kayak Surveys – Every turtle has unique scales on its flippers. Once you spot a turtle, you dive down to capture an image of this, and you get to name the turtle! It allows us to determine the population of turtles on the island and identify hotspots for where our conservation efforts should be focused.

Turtle Watch – Collect non-flash photography of nesting sites. Patrol these hotspots at night to protect them from poachers. This is important for reducing natural and human threats to nesting on the beach.

Awareness Talks – Going around local dive shops and resorts to conduct awareness talks to tourists and locals.

Beach Clean-Ups – Volunteers will help us with our beach clean-ups and sort the trash according to recyclable categories.

What makes you the proudest about your organization?

In the words of the company director David Quilter:

“It’s amazing to see how we have developed a circular economy on this small island. Our impact has allowed us to open our scope in helping the local community. Initially we trained up local school children to join our conservation efforts. When Covid made it hard for us to fund doing so, we were awareded grants to ensure that our efforts continued. That mean’t we could continue to train locals throughout the pandemic. There are people on my team that I knew as children and even helped teach out to swim when I first arrived to the island. Now as adults they are pioneering the conservation efforts that surround the Perhentian islands. It’s a hardworking community here, which makes our efforts all the more rewarding when we see and quantify our impacts.”

Since its launch, the impact of Fuze-Ecoteer has been profound. From releasing 25,000 hatchlings into the wild to recovering over 265 coral reefs. They are making a huge impact, not only in the water but on the ground too. During their beach clean-ups in 2020, they collected over 322.6kg of trash, sorted and recycled appropriately.

Despite the Covid pandemic massively impacting the size and functioning of their team, they were successfully able to have the most successful hatchling rate ever, with over 90% of their recorded hatchlings released into the wild.

If you’d like to join Fuze-Ecoteer on one of their many exciting projects, get in touch using the email above.