'Po Meurah', Aceh's threatened elephants.

By Ron Lilley

MEDAN, North Sumatra (JP): The troubled province of Aceh has some of the largest areas of forest in Sumatra. These, together with its mountainous topography, have helped to protect Aceh from the fires that have plagued other provinces.

Aceh's forests contain a wealth of rare wildlife, including, tigers, rhinos, tapirs and one of the largest surviving populations of Sumatran elephants.

The Sumatran elephant is a high-profile representative of this wealth, but rapid human population expansion and encroachment into forests have resulted in the loss of elephant habitat. As the resulting human-elephant conflicts escalate, there is a danger of public opinion increasingly turning against elephants.

For centuries, there was a culture of elephant domestication in Aceh, where thousands of elephants were captured and trained for use in regal ceremonies, transportation and warfare.

Although elephants were regularly seen near villages, crop raiding was minimal and elephants were respected. But this was when there was still enough land and forest for all. Over time, this cultural link has been almost completely broken, although a few traditional skills and beliefs concerning elephants can still be found among rural Acehnese people, who refer to elephants as Po Meurah, a term of respect.

Since the 1980s, the logging boom, transmigration and widespread forest encroachment have seriously fragmented elephant habitat. With their old migration paths disrupted by gardens and plantations, elephants have come into increasingly frequent conflict with humans, destroying their crops and damaging property. Villagers have been injured and sometimes killed when they try to scare the elephants away.

In 1987, the government initiated a scheme to catch these "problem" elephants, and transport them to newly established elephant training centers, where they could be tamed and trained for use in logging camps.

One of these centers, near Lhokseumawe, gradually filled up until there were 29 trained elephants there, together with their mahouts and a resident vet.

Then, in 1999, the government decided that elephant capture should officially be stopped. As the Indonesian economy took a nose-dive, the money designated for the elephant camps slowed to a trickle.

A decision was made to move the captive elephants away from Lhokseumawe after two mahouts went missing. The site was ransacked shortly after the move. Some of the animals were moved further west to Saree with their Acehnese mahouts. The rest were transferred to Aras Napal, just south of the provincial border.

To offset maintenance costs, the Aceh elephants are regularly herded onto trucks and transported as far away as Java, to take part in "attractions" and processions. Because the trucks are not purpose-built to carry elephants, there have been many injuries, and at least one elephant is said to have died as a result of falling from a truck.

Under siege

Meanwhile, in Saree, the remaining group of elephants and their mahouts live under near-siege conditions. The neglected site has no water, and there is no money for medicines, elephant food or mahout wages. Some farming communities have threatened to start killing wild elephants, together with their tame counterparts, if nothing is done to stop the crop raiding.

Over 400 trained elephants are currently being held in training centers throughout Sumatra and there is no demand for them or money to support them.

In a village further south, villagers say that elephants began to raid their crops shortly after clearance and conversion of forest adjacent to plantations. Companies are already obliged by law to provide help to local communities in their vicinity and the palm oil company promised the people a new school and mosque. To date, this promise has not been fulfilled. Even if given compensation, the villagers will still be faced with the problem of marauding elephants every year.

Exploration of alternative solutions, including the establishment of natural and man-made barriers, is an urgent priority for them.

Paradoxically, the Aceh conflict may be of some short-term benefit to the elephants and other wildlife. Many logging areas and plantations were abandoned as the war escalated and these areas are returning to jungle. With no human competitors, the elephants, tigers and other animals, are reclaiming their previous habitats.

Local villagers claim that, now the elephants have alternative areas in which to forage, elephant disturbances have decreased.

The Governor of Aceh has supported a moratorium on further logging and plantation concessions. As the province moves toward greater autonomy, this provides local decision makers with a golden opportunity to reassess the status and future use of the land. Recent flooding in Banda Aceh, and landslides in Nias, have helped to underline the negative economic impacts of uncontrolled deforestation.

Conservationists are attempting to protect the elephants, with the reasoning that, if elephants receive greater protection, then the forests in which they live will also stand a better chance of survival.

But time is running out for Sumatra's elephants. The establishment of "paper parks" will not be enough to guarantee their survival. Unless a conscious decision is made to protect their remaining habitat from further encroachment, the possibility of Indonesia soon losing its wild elephants forever is very real.

-- The writer is a technical adviser, Flora and Fauna International-Conservation of Elephant Landscapes in Aceh Project.