Komodo dragon kingdom under threat

Duncan Graham, Contributor, Surabaya

The few Australians who venture east of Kuta and enter Wallacea -- the Indonesian islands crunched between Kalimantan, New Guinea and Australia -- often find the terrain curiously familiar.

The people, language, culture and lifestyle are all strikingly different but in many areas the landform, savannah and some of the wildlife are just like parts of Northern Australia.

Wallacea (named after the famous 19th century English naturalist, Alfred Wallace) is hot and dry. Vegetation is often sparse; rivers that run in the wet season die in summer. Rainfall is shrinking. Fresh water is getting scarce.

The topography has been tortured by great upheavals in the past. The distinctive ocher hue that paints the arid landscape of the Great South Land -- and thought by many to be unique to that continent -- also tints this part of Nusa Tenggara.

For ecotourists the centerpiece of this fascinating transition zone between Asia and Australia is the sea and land that forms Komodo National Park -- five main islands and a splash of islets between Flores and Sumbawa. T

The biggest is Komodo and its major attraction is the internationally famous 'dragon' (see sidebar).

Before the economic crisis, terrorist bombings and travel warnings scared away the tourists, Komodo National Park attracted 30,000 outsiders a year, mainly from North America and Europe.

That number has now been cut by half.

The 1,817 square kilometer park was created in 1980. Despite its protected status the area and its wildlife are under constant threat from poachers, according to a new series of guidebooks published by The Nature Conservancy's Indonesia Coastal and Marine Program. They are titled A Natural History Guide to Komodo National Park.

Three volumes cover the land mass, the marine areas and park management.

Written in English and Indonesian, the pages enhanced by fine line drawings by Donald Bason, the books should satisfy the most curious of tourists and add significantly to the pleasure of any visit.

In the past, factual information has been hard to assemble. It's all there for anyone with a fast Internet connection or access to a good marine science library, but it's all over the place.

In my experience the rangers on Komodo have been as dormant as the dragons when it comes to presenting facts. That's understandable; it takes a real effort to keep smiling in the face of a barrage of questions from bule who have come half-way round the world to see this marvel, and are not going to leave until they've sucked the sap out of the experience, whatever the heat.

Issues that fascinate the visitor may be ho-hum to the ranger who just hopes to find a placid reptile, make sure no-one goes home limbless, and then retreat to the shade of a lontar palm.

Conservation, asset maintenance and promotion are awkward partners.

So this guide is not just useful -- it is indispensable reading before you brave the washing-machine turbulence between the islands and after you hopefully make it to land. (Hint: Wrap the books in plastic -- getting saturated is just one of the lesser hazards of negotiating the park.)

More than welcome is the plain English text, particularly useful to those who don't have the international language as their mother tongue. Too many science writers seem to believe their credibility depends on producing unintelligible polysyllable-choked sentences the length of a long yawn.

The author, U.S. 'seacologist' Arnaz Mehta Erdmann, has chosen a question-and-answer format. In the hands of government publicists this style patronizes and frequently frustrates; the queries authorities pose are not those you usually want to ask. But in this case the questions assume intelligence and the answers genuinely meet the need.

Volume Two records the park's marine life. The pictures and descriptions should be enough to help check anything you are likely to encounter among the 1,000 plus species of fish. If you want more help there's a good bibliography. (The author is no amateur. With her husband, marine biologist Dr Mark Erdmann, she won international fame in the late 1990s for identifying the lobe-finned coelacanth, the so-called 'fossil fish', in North Sulawesi.)

More than 3,000 people live in the park. Most are the descendants of recent settlers. They make their living mainly by fishing for squid and shrimp, and from assisting the infrastructure of tourism, with the monster lizards being the box-office stars.

This industry is fragile; dragons have recently become extinct on Padar island. This happened after poachers killed off the Timor deer, the reptiles' main food source.

The park's 70 rangers have a tough job. They must persuade the poorly-educated locals (including 16,000 others from the islands of Flores and Sape who also fish the rich waters) that bombing and poisoning the reef may fill the scuppers today but will surely result in destruction of their livelihood as the coral dies.

Firing the savannah may produce a venison steak barbecue, but regular burning and felling will change the habitat and destroy some of the 254 plant species.

If these go, so will many of the 277 animal species. Because most are dependent on each other for food, shelter, fertilizer and other essentials, upsetting the balance has some unpleasant effects: Extinction is forever.

The Komodo National Park is not just an extraordinary eco- system. It is an international treasure that Indonesia has to husband on behalf of the world. That tricky task can be made easier if rich visitors wanting to gape, and poor locals struggling to survive, can understand what is happening and why they should care.

These books explain all, succinctly and well.

Further information about the three-part Komodo National Park guide is available from The Nature Conservancy (TNC) on (0361) 287272 (contact person Tri Soekirman) or website: www.tnc- seacmpa.org. The Komodo National Park website is: http://www.komodonationalpark.org