East Kalimantan porpoises face threat of extinction
East Kalimantan porpoises face threat of extinction
By Iskandar Zulkarnaen
SAMARINDA, East Kalimantan (Antara): In the 1970s, Mahakam river was a big attraction for locals wanting to watch schools of playful porpoises (Orcaella brevirostris).
In the late afternoon, when weather was fine, people would gather at the river bank waiting for the big animals to proceed down the river with only their shiny black backs showing on the surface of the water.
Locals call them "fish" (ikan pesut Mahakam), even though the animals are in fact mammals.
Such exotic sights have become a thing of the past because the porpoise has become highly endangered due to increasing industrial pollution.
Many children under five years of age living beside the river have never seen one of the creatures. For many of them, porpoises are part of their bedtime stories. As if to remind people what a porpoise looks like, the provincial government has built a large porpoise statue in front of the gubernatorial office, which happens to be located near the Mahakam river.
The monument has become a popular recreational site for children in the town. Parents will explain to their children everything they can recall about porpoises.
A recent study by the local Agency for Natural Resources Conservation estimates the number of porpoises in the Mahakam river at 100.
The species are known to exist only in three major rivers in the world: the Mahakam, the Irawady in Myanmar and the Amazon in Brazil. Porpoises like living in groups of three to five at a depth of between five to 18 meters in fresh water.
The fast dwindling population of porpoises has drawn the concern of environmentalists. Mahakam River and Lakes Society (Marilas), for example, has proposed that porpoises be bred in enclosures and then released.
Marilas chairman Chandradewana Boer said in a recent seminar in Samarinda that the local Botanical Gardens and Lempake Educational Forest of Samarinda provided good places for breeding purposes. The gardens have a six-hectare lake with a depth of five meters.
"The Mahakam porpoises are increasingly endangered due to the rapid degradation of their habitat," Boer said.
A breeding ground would not only provide a safe haven for the animals, but would also make a good place to conduct scientific studies. Additionally, the breeding places would provide a recreational spot, he said.
The 300-hectare botanical gardens and Lempake Educational Forest lie in the same area, about 30 kilometers north of Samarinda.
Marilas has found conditions in the botanical garden's lake "ideal" for porpoises, which usually deliver only one offspring after a 14-month pregnancy.
The lake holds water from a number of creeks in the jungle and it discharges excess water to Karang Mumus river, which surrounds Samarinda.
Situated in a limestone area, the lake is said to be able to hold water for a long period of time, and can therefore withstand a reasonably prolonged dry season as occurred from the middle of 1997 till the beginning of 1998.
According to Boer, the lake could be divided into a feeding ground, play area and resting ground for the porpoises.
If the breeding plan materialized, the area would substantially add to the attraction of the forest as an ecotourism site in East Kalimantan. The Lempake forest is home to various mammals such as orangutans, proboscis monkeys and deer. Reptiles such as pythons and crocodiles, as well as a host of bird species are also commonplace.
Porpoises have been successfully bred at Ancol Dreamland in Jakarta.
The idea to breed porpoise in East Kalimantan has received a positive response from Awang Farouk Ishak, chief of the provincial office overseeing environmental impact control.
"Porpoises in Mahakam river, Semayang lake and Jempang lake are critically endangered because of the presence of sawmill and coal factories in the hinterland," he said.
The factories dump their industrial waste into the river without properly treating the waste.
Environmentalists have also attributed the dwindling porpoise population and declining fish and prawn catches in Mahakam to overfishing by locals.
Continuing industrial and forestry activities have also worsened the situation, as major rivers and lakes in East Kalimantan undergo rapid siltation.
The provincial environmental impact control agency found that coal factories in the hinterland contributed 99.5 percent of industrial waste pollution in the province. The plants dumped annually an estimated 84.6 tons of liquid waste into the rivers.
Along the Mahakam river there are several coal, wood sawmill, paper and glue factories.
The unchecked logging and opening of new plantations have resulted in widespread erosion and caused siltation in Mahakam river, which is 400 meters wide and 900 kilometers long.
The same thing has happened to three major lakes that become the natural habitat of porpoises: the 15,000 hectare Jempang lake, the 13,000 hectare Semayang lake and 11,000 hectare Malintang lake.
When a prolonged dry spell hit East Kalimantan between 1997 and 1998, five porpoises lived an increasingly hard life in the shallow Semayang lake. The local government were quick to come to the rescue and the animals were saved.
Following the 1998 dry spell, the provincial government has held a series of seminars on how to save the porpoises, but no concrete action has been taken.
Unless the government and the public do something, East Kalimantan people will have to go to Jakarta to see porpoises, which have become the East Kalimantan province's mascot.