Elephant attacks cause big losses

Elephant attacks cause big losses

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

As oil palm plantations and timber estates have widely expanded and destroyed elephant habitats, the giant mammal has taken revenge by running roughshod through the plots, inflicting annual losses amounting to trillions of rupiah, according to the World Wild Fund (WWF) Indonesia.

"In Riau alone, the largest palm oil producing province, the losses due to elephant damage of oil palm plantations and timber estates reaches a total of about Rp 950 billion (US$105 million) per year," the WWF Indonesia regional director, Nazir Foead, said on Wednesday on the sidelines of a seminar dealing with the impact of the pulp and paper industry.

He said that elephants mainly attacked oil palm plantations because they liked to eat parts of the palm trees.

"But those who suffer from elephant attacks are not only the big companies but local people who have small farms," he said.

According to him, an elephant requires 150 kilograms of food for each meal.

Unfortunately, people would rather kill the elephants than improve the methods used when developing oil palm plantations or timber estates, he said.

Besides destroying elephant habitats, oil palm plantations and timber estates have also devastated other animal habitats such as the tiger, according to Nazir.

"We are very concerned about the impact of these plantations and estates on the elephant and the tiger as these animals have also attacked oil palm plantation, timber estates and even human," he said.

Indonesia is the second largest palm oil producer in the world after Malaysia.

Last year, Indonesia produced around 9 million tons of palm oil. With the present price of around US$400 per ton, the total revenue from palm oil production could reach as much as US$3.6 billion.

The country has over 3 million hectares of oil palm plantations and plans to develop another 96,000 hectares this year.

Nazir suggested that the plantation and timber firms should carry out a comprehensive study before converting forests into cash crops to minimize the possibility of animal attacks.

He called on the companies to adhere to an international certification to run their companies at a sustainable level.

"Some companies I know have tried to implement it, but we haven't yet heard the results," he said.