Indigenous people-national park symbiotic mutualism

By MMI Ahyani

The Jakarta Post, in cooperation with Banten West Java Tourism Development Corporation, is presenting weekly issues on the Banten region. This week's issue is on Ujung Kulon and on the communities surrounding it.

BANDUNG (JP): It seems that a new paradigm for environmental management is needed. Environmental conservation can no longer be considered an effort to maintain the sustainability of flora and fauna. In the present era of pragmatism, environmental conservation must be realized through sustainable utilization.

This change in paradigm can be seen at Ujung Kulon National Park, a land and water area measuring over 120,000 hectares. This national park may be considered unique in a number of ways.

Located on the western tip of Java Island, Ujung Kulon was first introduced to the outside world as an area rich in diverse flora and fauna by German botanist F. Junghun. In 1921, the then Dutch colonial government made Ujung Kulon peninsula and the Panaitan islands nature reserves.

After various changes in the legal foundation introduced by the Indonesian government, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) made Ujung Kulon a world heritage site in 1992.

Undeniably, the greatest attraction of Ujung Kulon is the presence of the Javan rhino (rhinoceros sondaicus), one of the most ancient animals still living today. This is especially true because Ujung Kulon is only 200 kilometers west of Jakarta.

Head of Ujung Kulon National Park, Tri Wibowo, said, "Besides its rhinos, Ujung Kulon can also boast other rare animals and rare plants, which are all protected inside this national park."

It is for this reason, he said, that Ujung Kulon has always been managed in an integrated manner, without prioritizing a particular animal species.

Besides animals and plants, there are also people living around the national park. This has led to a dilemma of which should be saved first: animals, plants or humans.

At the edge of and far beyond the national park, there is a dense population of people. Only several dozen kilometers away from the national park, there is a tourism resort. Not surprisingly, the traffic has been getting heavier and the number of people has increased in the area. As there is consequently more and more human activity, the competition for a decent life has become ever more fierce.

Even inside the national park, there is a community of people. Take, for example, the residents of Legon Pakis. They lived in this area long before the Indonesian government made Ujung Kulon a national park in 1984. These people live by fishing and also multiple crop planting, a system developed by state forestry company Perhutani in 1967.

However, the lives of these people are now squeezed between the interest of the national park and the development of their agricultural undertakings. The Legon Pakis residents are allowed to remain inside the national park, but they are prohibited from extending their farming land.

Legon Pakis is a quiet place and far removed from everything. Houses are spread out over a number of locations. Uniquely, these houses are all fenceless. According to Uus Sudjana, a forest ranger at the national park, perhaps only in Legon Pakis you can find houses without fences.

There are no more than 67 families living in Legon Pakis. The houses, though dull-looking, are quite large and their yards are clean. Some have glass windows and are painted in a variety of colors. Not far from the houses you can see rice granaries, mostly decayed by age.

Apart from religious elders, the Legon Pakis residents consider a gatekeeper called Jumar as their elder. In Ujung Kulon, there are at least seven gatekeepers keeping guard at Sang Hyang Sirah, a site that locals believe to be sacred, where they can go to meditate, offer prayers and to ask for help for various needs.

Although the Legon Pakis residents generally live modestly, some houses do have an antenna and small generators for their electricity. The electricity from these generators is distributed to a number of neighbors, each of whom gets 40 watts. Every month they pay Rp 6,000 to the owner of the generator.

One of the difficulties for these people is the overland roads, which are in very bad repair, to reach subdistrict towns or villages. To get to the nearest elementary school, the children have to walk about one hour in the direction of Cikawung Seberang.

If these children complete elementary school, they will continue their studies at junior high school. This means larger school fees and a longer trip on foot. The nearest junior high school is located in Ujungjaya, Tamanjaya village. If they continue their studies at high school, they must travel to the Sumur subdistrict or even to Cibaliung.

One of the residents, Sugiono, said, "If they have the money, they will have to stay in a boarding house. In fact, Legon Pakis residents generally find it difficult to make both ends meet."

According to other locals, no one from Legon Pakis has ever studied at a university. After leaving school, they usually work as farm laborers, fishermen or porters helping visitors to the national park.

But, most of them work as farm laborers or farmers, and they can produce up to four metric tons of unhusked rice per hectare. Some of them sell coconuts at Rp 300 apiece. However, as the road is in bad repair, they can only realize a small profit.

The coconuts are sold for Rp 600 each in Sumur. This price includes travel expenses to Sumur, as well as food and other expenses. From Sumur, the coconuts are taken to Jakarta by truck, which is leased for Rp 250,000. However, not all residents in Legon Pakis own coconut trees. Those who do not have coconut trees must be content working as climbers. They get Rp 50 per coconut.

Residents in Legon Pakis must also travel a long way for medical treatment at an auxiliary health center. Sometimes they just call for a health officer from the center or just rely on traditional medicines. Chardisah, a baby girl, for example, has on her brow a small piece of cloth believed to contain a magic charm to stop her hiccups.

Unheeded complaints

Legon Pakis villagers and many other people along the 22-km road from Sumur to Legon Pakis have voiced their complaints about the ill-cared for road. However, the regional administration is yet to respond to these complaints, said the head of the Ujung Jaya village community resilience agency, Safruddin.

He said locals also hoped they would be given proper attention, just like the national park. They have twice filed in requests with the Pandeglang regent, asking the regional administration to repair the road. A photograph of the road was attached to the requests. The Pandeglang regency administration has failed to respond.

In fact, in the 1980s, the Pandeglang regency administration did respond to the complaints of Legon Pakis residents, resettling them in Pandeglang. However, because the houses provided to them were in bad repair and the resettlement area was bad, they returned to Legon Pakis.

Because the road is poorly maintained, a local wanting to travel by public transportation must spend Rp 25,000 to Rp 30,000 per ride.

"When the road was still relatively good and it was the dry season, you had to pay Rp 5,000 for one ride. Now that the road is in very bad repair and it is the wet season, no public transportation is willing to take you to Legon Pakis. Cars can pass only in the dry season, but then only cars with double differential gears can pass," said Safruddin.

According to Nasir Foead of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the complaints lodged by the locals have been passed on to the regional administration, which has failed to satisfactorily respond to the complaints.

It is funny, he said, because before a discussion is held on how to help solve the village road problem, there is fear that if the road is repaired, the damage to Ujung Kulon National Park would occur at a more rapid rate.

Good roads will allow people to cause more damage to the national park. So one may logically conclude that the roads leading to the national park are deliberately left in poor condition to protect the national park.

This possibility once surprised Legon Pakis residents. However, Tri Wibowo was quick to deny this possibility. He said that good roads would not automatically lead to greater damage to the national park. Instead, he argued, the economic condition of local residents would be improved and then they would no longer need to enter the forest.

Unfortunately, the regional administration and the park's management have not tapped the maximum tourism potential of the buffer zone surrounding the national park, in which there are now 19 villages. In fact, trips to these villages, located along the path toward the gateway to Ujung Kulon from the subdistricts of Sumur or Cimanggu, may be developed into a lucrative tourism business by the regional administration.

The potential of these villages is great because homestay facilities may be provided for tourists. They can stay there and observe local customs and traditions. In this way, the villagers could earn money and would no longer need to go into the national park.

Such ideas have cropped up in discussions held by the Indonesian Wildlife Conservation Forum, the WWF, Ujung Kulon National Park, the Rhino Monitoring and Protection Unit and the locals represented by Safruddin.

According to Safruddin, locals hope to be able to participate in safeguarding the national park and, at the same time, also want to receive attention and aid from the relevant authorities. What is happening now is that locals have been made part of the problem, while their potential has never been tapped.

It seems that the government now pays more attention to the Javan rhinos rather than developing a system which could safeguard Ujung Kulon, including the rhinos, in an integrated manner. The proof is that security in the area is poor because of poor coordination among relevant agencies, and also because of poor facilities.

What needs be done is to ensure that any discussions about the national park are comprehensive. From 1967 to 1997, for example, any talks about this national park contained only data on the rhinos.

Ironically, there are only two patrol boats manned by some 28 people to safeguard the core zone in the Ujung Kulon peninsula, measuring 38,543 hectares.

It is ironic to see that the national park's information center and office on Peucang Island has collapsed because of old age, while next to it an imposing hotel for forest tourism has been put up. The room rates? Between US$35 and $50.

The time is at hand to give serious thought to the symbiosis of social life and the perpetuity of the national park. The community can benefit from, and at the same time maintain, the sustainability of the national park. In this way, rare and protected animals and plants can be well looked after and serve as great attractions for tourists.