School transforms elephants from killers into toys
School transforms elephants from killers into toys
By Jim Della-Giacoma
WAY KAMBAS, Indonesia (AFP): In the wild, Arum, with her imposing size and young calf by her side, would be seen as a killer by the people of Lampung, a dozen of whom are expected to die this year as Sumatra's elephants run amok.
She would passionately guard her offspring as the pair trampled through rice paddies, grabbing the fruit from the trees of hard-worked gardens.
Local farmers would attack them in a vain attempt to ward them off, often risking their lives in a last-ditch attempt to defend their modest livelihoods.
But as a graduate of the Way Kambas Elephant Training Center (PLG), the once wild Arum has a new life as a placid and well- behaved beast, seen now the doting mother of the young, as yet unnamed, one-month-old calf that tourists love to cuddle and be photographed with.
It is a dramatic transformation from a murderous beast to a children's plaything.
"The elephants are killing people because their habitat has been taken over by people for farming," the regional head of the Department of Forestry in Lampung, Pandjaitan, explained to AFP.
When they become a problem, the dangerous Sumatran elephants are drugged and taken from the wild by staff of the Forestry Ministry, who have responsibility for the preservation of wildlife in Indonesia, to one of four PLGs on the archipelago's main western island.
Indonesian wildlife officials estimate there are somewhere between 2,800 and 4,000 elephants still alive in Sumatra, with that number at least stable, if not increasing.
In Lampung province at the base of Sumatra, where population pressure from an active government transmigration program has eroded the already limited living space of the lumbering beasts in the last decade, Pandjaitan said there are thought to be 800 elephants.
Up to 300 live outside the protection of the province's two main national parks of Way Kambas in the east and Bukit Barisan Selatan in the mountainous west.
The Way Kambas PLG itself has only 158 beasts within its 1,000 hectare (2, 470 acre) confines, with 82 animals already graduated from the 18 month course and gone on to be tourist attractions, zoo exhibits and even workhorses across the country.
Forestry officials regard the taming of animals for a lifetime, possibly up to 60 years, in a zoo, fun park or circus, an acceptable compromise.
"The people are happy with this, and so this way the elephants can be preserved," said Pandjaitan, predicting that between nine and 12 people would die a year in Lampung under the feet of enraged wild elephants.
"We can make a relationship between the people and the elephants, which is mutually beneficial and helpful," he added.
Local conservationists support the strategy.
"We only agree as the elephants are only being taken because they are destroying crops, but not if they are specifically taken just to become tourist attractions," said Eddy, a member of the Watala environmental group in the provincial capital Bandar Lampung, 120 kilometers (74 miles) southwest of here.
While the majority have gone to become tourist attractions, the head of the education section at the Way Kambas PLG, Nazarudin, said the elephants are also trained to work on farms, plowing fields or hauling logs in the forest, and even as mounts for forest rangers on patrol against wood poachers.
Ironically, some have even gone full circle and in a recent police operation were used to destroy the crops of squatters who were being evicted from a state forest.