Saving cockatoos in Sumba

Saving cockatoos in Sumba

Barry Neild, Agence France-Presse/Sumba

Herman Dedi recalls when yellow-crested cockatoos were pests on
Sumba, swooping out of the forest to steal his papaya.

Now the bird, unique to the Indonesian island and adopted as
its emblem, is on the brink of oblivion with fewer than 300
remaining.

"Our people tell stories about the cockatoo, it is our symbol,
but soon there will be none and stories will be all that's left,"
says Dedi, a resident of Manrara, a traditional village on the
edge of the bird's dwindling habitat.

Across the Indonesian archipelago and Asia, the plight of
Sumba's cockatoo is shared by scores of exotic and beautiful
species as illegal logging, the demands of a rapidly expanding
population and bird trafficking take their toll.

Conservation group Birdlife International earlier this month
warned that unless action were taken, 100 Asian bird species
would be extinct within a decade, most of them from among
Indonesia's 117 endangered bird types.

On Sumba, an island of ancient rural communities to the
southeast of Bali, the vibrantly-plumed Sulfurea citrinocristata
cockatoo is joined by three other birds that are found nowhere
else on the planet and could soon vanish entirely.

Less than half a century ago, Sumba was a paradise for
wildlife, with more than half the island's 10,000 square
kilometers covered in lush greenery. Today only 6.5 percent is
forest while most has become parched and bare scrubland.

"The decline on Sumba has been steep," said Pete Wood, project
coordinator for Birdlife Indonesia, which opened an office on the
island several years ago in the hope of reversing the fortunes of
its feathered population.

Wood said that while few would notice the passing of Sumba's
little-known hornbills, quails and fruit doves, their demise has
wider implications.

"Places that are good for birds are good for other wildlife.
When they are under threat, the environment around them is also
suffering," he said.

Sumba's birds suffered heavily as villagers tore down trees to
build traditional houses and cleared lands for crops. In recent
years, the main threat has been from trappers who illegally sell
the prized creatures as pets.

Elsewhere in Indonesia, rampant logging which annually
chainsaws an area of forest almost as large as Belgium has
continued largely unchecked thanks to the same corruption that
lets bird trafficking flourish.

In ravaged landscapes across 28 Asian countries from India to
Japan, Birdlife has identified about 2,300 "important bird
areas", of which 43 percent lack any formal protection.

But although the future looks bleak for Asia's avian world,
there are glimmers of optimism -- even on Sumba, where villagers
now realize that protecting the birds also guarantees their own
future.

"The forest can only survive if the birds survive, because
they are the ones who spread the seeds and without them the
wildlife suffers," says Dedi.

His village, a collection of 150 wooden houses topped by
enormous thatched towers seen throughout Sumba, borders the
newly-created Manupeu Tanahdaru national park, a project Birdlife
believes could offer hope beyond the island.

When the 135,000-hectare area is fully operative, access will
be restricted, farming and felling heavily limited and bird
trapping actively outlawed. If successful it is hoped the park
will become a model for other areas.

Several villages, including Manrara, have already agreed to
cooperate and in a sign local authorities and communities are
committed, Sumba recently fined and jailed a bird trafficker for
eight months -- a heavy sentence for a crime seldom punished in
Indonesia.

For Dedi, who has become an adept tracker of birds, attuned to
their whistles and calls, a thriving national park offers a new
livelihood in the shape of tourists eager to hire him as a guide
to help them glimpse such rare species.

And for Manrara's 55-year-old chief, Umbu G. Rajang, the
national park is a chance to revive cultural practices steeped in
Sumba's spiritual folklore that are in decline under the
pressures of modern life.

"Once, all we knew was the forest around us. Because of the
growing needs of people this has been reduced," he said,
surveying the undergrowth from under the straw eaves of his
wooden house.

"It has always been a traditional practice to protect the
forest, not to cut certain trees and not to hurt the birds."