Sandalwood on the brink of extinction

Sandalwood on the brink of extinction

By Sapto HP

JAKARTA (Antara): There is a sad story to tell about yellow
sandalwood (Santalum album linn). Once considered the "maiden of
the house", protecting the entire family with its fragrance, it
is now a tree that brings about problems, and, as such, has to be
eliminated.

According to literature, sandalwood -- one of Indonesia's
indigenous trees, has been popular since ancient Egyptian times
for of its medicinal properties.

During the Dutch colonial era, particularly in the East Indies
Trading Company (VOC) period when Dutch traders came here for
spices, yellow sandalwood was uncontrollably exploited to the
extent of causing suffering to the people.

Chinese traders helped the VOC by collecting yellow sandalwood
-- the tree can grow to 20 meters high with a diameter of up to
40 centimeters -- from the people. Later, yellow sandalwood
trading was monopolized by the Dutch and Chinese traders.

Ridiculously, in independent Indonesia, the monopoly is held
by the central government, which requires the people to take care
of the trees, an obligation that the Dutch colonial
administration imposed upon the locals.

An East Nusa Tenggara provincial administration official,
Herman H. Banoek, said that there was a time when the locals were
obligated to take care of yellow sandalwood trees in their yards
or plantations.

In fact, he said, this regulation was enforced in the context
of conserving sandalwood. However, the policy has backfired
because it considerably disadvantaged the people. This regulation
has caused fear among the locals because when a yellow sandalwood
tree dies in one's yard, the owner of the house will be detained
without due process of the law.

To ordinary folk, just like during the times of kings when
income distribution was unfair, only high-ranking officials today
can benefit from this plant, which is used as an ingredient for
expensive perfumes.

That's why, to the locals, yellow sandalwood, which may be
made into essential oils and, therefore, costs a lot, is not a
natural resource for which people must thank God but is rather a
source of great trouble. Hence, the local names with which
sandalwood has been called: hau plenat (government-owned wood) or
hau lesi (the wood that brings trouble).

In fact, the locals do not openly defy the regulation to take
care of yellow sandalwood trees. Like it or not, they simply obey
it and take good care of every sandalwood plant which the local
authorities have registered.

Frustration

However, as soon as they see young sandalwood trees in their
yards, they destroy them, believing that these young trees will
be a source of trouble in future.

This frustration with yellow sandalwood trees alone is enough
to cause the extinction of the trees. Things have gotten worse
because of the adverse legacy of the New Order: corruption,
collusion and nepotism involving local administrations,
bureaucracy and traders.

As soon as the locals can see any slackening in the control of
yellow sandalwood trees exercised by the local administrations,
they illegally fell the trees and sell them to certain buyers.
Ideally, a yellow sandalwood tree must reach the age of 40 before
it is good enough to cut for its oil.

So, it seems that every way leads to the extinction of yellow
sandalwood trees, the main income earner for East Nusa Tenggara
province.

Small population

Records compiled by Sundoro Darmokusumo and researchers at the
forestry service of East Nusa Tenggara province, show that this
province bordering East Timor no longer has natural pockets of
yellow sandalwood trees because the existing population is very
small and thinly spread.

Data obtained from an inventory of yellow sandalwood trees
collected in 1999 by a sampling method may corroborate the above
statement.

Data from the Denpasar-based forestry service show that the
number of sandalwood plants on a plot of 21.6 hectares in a
protected forest area in South Central Timor was 14 trees, while
on a 8.4-hectare plot of land in a production forest there were
just nine trees.

The inventory of a protected forest area in North Central
Timor, on a plot of land measuring 27.8 hectares, came up with 16
trees while the same effort made in a production forest measuring
2.8 hectares identified two trees. It was on Timor island that
yellow sandalwood trees used to be found in abundance.

On Sumba island, according to former East Nusa Tenggara
governor Herman Musakabe, there are no more yellow sandalwood
trees left.

Of course, in this context, it is the East Nusa Tenggara
provincial administration that feels most unhappy about this
situation, especially considering that yellow sandalwood is the
main money spinner for the province.

According to data complied by the financial bureau of East
Nusa Tenggara's provincial administration from 1990 to 1991 and
the following eight years, sandalwood contributed about 22
percent (equivalent to Rp 4 billion) a year to the province's
coffers. To the two districts, North Central Timor and South
Central Timor, the contribution of yellow sandalwood to their
earnings reached 50 percent.

Naturally, therefore, the East Nusa Tenggara provincial
administration has become the first party to take the initiative
to save sandalwood from extinction. It has, among other things,
issued a regulation prohibiting the felling of sandalwood until
2003.

The provincial administration has also asked other
institutions, such as the Bogor Agricultural Institute (IPB),
Gadjah Mada University (UGM) and the Indonesian Institute of
Sciences (LIPI), to cooperate with it in saving yellow sandalwood
by means of cultivation. A warm response was received from these
research institutions and, therefore, the efforts to conserve
sandalwood trees must be stronger and more serious so that the
result will be more favorable than the cultivation efforts made
previously.

A study must be made of how sandalwood was saved in the last
century.

The records of the forestry service of the East Nusa Tenggara
province say that efforts to cultivate yellow sandalwood trees
were undertaken in Central South Timor in 1924.

Up to 1991, the local forestry service had tried to plant
yellow sandalwood trees on a 2,000-ha plot of land. Prior to
1993, meanwhile, the state forestry company, Perum Perhutani II,
in its timber estate plan, planted yellow sandalwood trees on a
plot of land measuring 315 hectares while in Kupang district, the
trees were planted on a 48-hectare plot of land.

"However, this planting of yellow sandalwood trees is no
guarantee that yellow sandalwood will be sustainably preserved,"
said Sundoro.

Challenge

Meanwhile, Oemi Hani'in Suseno, a lecturer at UGM's School of
Forestry, said that cultivating yellow sandalwood in East Nusa
Tenggara was being challenged by serious constraints.

"There are a lot of problems connected with the development of
yellow sandalwood trees there," said Oemi, a researcher who
established a yellow sandalwood plantation in Wanagama, a
forestry research project carried out by UGM, and in Jember, East
Java.

She did not specifically mention what this serious challenge
was, but according to Jimmy Pello, a lecturer at the School of
Law at Nusa Cendana University, the East Nusa Tenggara community
members are in no way familiar with the yellow sandalwood
planting concept.

The locals in East Nusa Tenggara province do not believe that
humans can plant yellow sandal trees. They also believe that
birds who eat the ripe yellow sandalwood fruit then inadvertently
"sow" the seeds from which the trees grow.

The results of one piece of research also shows that the
failure in yellow sandalwood planting is attributable to the
inability of the East Nusa Tenggara people to grow the tree and
also to the characteristics of the tree itself as it is
vulnerable to improper human treatment.

Nevertheless, Oemie said she was sure yellow sandalwood trees
could be cultivated in her own home village as long as the
necessary requirements were met. In this context, for example,
the attitude of the locals toward this tree must be changed and
that the regulation causing them concern be scrapped.

The sustainable conservation of yellow sandalwood trees is
certainly not easy, but there is a chance to do just that.
Initiatives toward conserving this tree must be taken now as
otherwise Yellow Sandalwood Land, the name given to East Nusa
Tenggara, will remain just a groundless name.

"It is not too late to make the effort. If not now, then
when?" asked Herman Musakabe, who, as a former governor, must
have enjoyed the spoils of yellow sandalwood.