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.