Effort to involve community falls flat at Mt. Halimun

By Yusran Edo Fauzi

MT. HALIMUN, West Java (JP): In a plan designed to marry conservation needs with those of the surrounding community, locals living in the eastern region of Mt. Halimun National Park were employed three years ago to manage a guest house in the area.

But the plan has all but failed, and today people have returned to felling trees within the park.

The locals consist of seven "enclaves", inhabiting the supporting and exploitation zones. The areas are surrounded by lowland rain forest at a height of 500 meters to 1,000 meters above sea level. It is secondary forest, already damaged by human activities.

Hunters and illegal loggers have now turned their attention to the forest at 1,000 meters to 1,500 meters above sea level in the 40,000 hectare park.

"Apparently it is hard to take repressive measures throughout this national park. We focus more on taking preventive actions toward enclave inhabitants," the head of TGH hall, Sudarmadji, told The Jakarta Post.

The preventive measures included the guest house plan, devised by a consortium of non-governmental organizations with a joint mission to improve the economic welfare of local inhabitants in Citalahab village, Bogor.

"Automatically, the guest house will make inhabitants maintain forest preservation because a forest becomes the power of attraction for visitors to stay," Sudarmadji said.

Many of Java's rare native animals, such as the Javan gibbon, muntjac deer and Javan Hawk-eagle, are still found in close proximity to the guest house.

The guest house is nestled among dense vegetation and located in the Nirmala tea plantation. Mist often shrouds the view during the day, but at night the vantage point offers a beautiful view of the flickering lights of Bogor and Jakarta from the top of the plantation.

It takes between six and seven hours to reach the eastern part of the national park from Jakarta, traveling on the road to Sukabumi.

The Citalahap guest house consists of three bamboo-walled houses with seven bedrooms and a gazebo. The construction cost was Rp 50 million, which was paid for by the consortium. At the grand opening in 1997, the guest house became the property of the local inhabitants.

Suhara from Citalahap was its first operations manager, with dozens of locals helping him as daily management staff. They were trained by the consortium and they were confident there would be many guests.

Suhara was so optimistic he renovated the front part of his home as a homestay at a cost of Rp 6 million. He said it could be used if there were not enough rooms at the guest house. Others followed suit by also building homestays.

In the following months guest houses and homestays were built in the villages of Leuwijamang, in the north of the park, and Ciptarasa, in southern Halimun.

Luxury

In mid-1998, the administration of the national park worked together with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to build two large, luxury houses on raised platforms in the valleys near the Cikaniki River, 1 km from Citalahab guest house.

Then minister of forestry, Muslimin Nasution, designated the Rp 1 billion properties as the Cikaniki Research Station. They not only have a laboratory, presentation room and office, but also six bedrooms, kitchenettes and other three-star hotel facilities. They were intended for researchers from the Ministry of Forestry, Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) and JICA.

"It is natural that we also have guest houses ... to support the national park as a place for research," Sudarmadji argued.

He acknowledged that other visitors also used the facilities for recreation "but we weren't competing with the guest houses managed by locals for guests".

Still, the number of guests for Citalahab's guest houses decreased, while Cikaniki often hosted visitors. The forestry ministry distributed brochures about the site, and guests were able to make bookings through a mobile phone number.

In contrast, there was no telephone service to Citalahab.

At the eastern entrance to the park in Kabandungan subdistrict, Sukabumi, visitors were offered information about the Cikaniki guest houses, but there was no information about Citalahab.

"At the end of 1998 the consortium closed down as it felt it was not able to prove that guest houses increased the welfare of local communities," Suhara, 60, said.

The guest house revenues were never enough to share every month. Only a small number of villagers who managed the guest house daily received individual shares of only 30 percent of annual revenues. The remainder was used for operational costs and to build a musholla (Islamic prayer room), and a public toilet.

Fortunately, the Nirmala tea plantation, a concession of the Sinarmas Group, employs people from around the area. Priority is given to people from four villages surrounding the plantation.

In early 1999 the guest house project was taken over by Yayasan Ekowisata Halimun (Halimun Ecotourism Institute), but the Citalahab guest house still has few visitors. During the New Year's holiday there was not a single guest, although the regular room rate was slashed by 50 percent to Rp 40,000.