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.