Shrimp farmers charged with destroying mangrove forests
Oyos Saroso, The Jakarta Post, Bandarlampung, Lampung
The continued economic crisis has driven thousands of local families to try their luck in shrimp farming here in place of the ailing shrimp company PT Dipasena Citra Darmaja (DCD).
Their new livelihood, however, has cost the environment as they have cleared mangrove forests along the province's eastern coastal line for the ponds.
The clearing of the conservation area along the coast that has occurred for the past six months has resulted in extensive damage to the ecosystem and severe abrasion, particularly along the banks of the Seputih river, the artery of Tulangbawang regency.
A spokesman for PT Central Pertiwi Bahari (CPB), a company engaged in shrimp farming in the area, Kitono, said the number of traditional shrimp farmers had reached at least 4,000.
The ponds, he added, have sparked fears not only of damage to the protected areas but of hazards to the company's business.
"If their shrimps are infected by a viral disease, we are afraid it will affect ours." he said.
He complained that the traditional shrimp farmers had annexed the company's plots of land which had been re-greened and prepared to be converted into shrimp ponds.
"There is nothing we can do and we are frustrated because there are thousands of them and the local administration seems to give no protection to CPB," Kitono said.
CPB is one of the province's valuable assets aside from the debt-strapped DCD which belongs to tycoon Sjamsul Nursalim.
Mijo, 40, a shrimp farmer from East Lampung denied Kitono's allegations that the farmers had occupied CPB's land and caused environmental damage.
"PT CPB had no rights to the land. We are poor and what's wrong with us making shrimp ponds in this area?"
Mijo admitted that he and other locals cultivated shrimps in order to survive the protracted economic crisis.
Dirman, an environmentalist from the Lampung Forest Conservation Consortium, said both local shrimp farmers and PT CPB should be held responsible for damaging the green area.
He said the company played a major role in environmental destruction here by clearing the mangrove forests in 1997.
To make things worse, two years ago some 400 people from Rajabasa Lama village, East Lampung cleared and cultivated 1,200 hectares of forest in the National Park of Way Kambas which they claimed to be their ancestral lands.
"Half of the 350 hectares of forest in the National Park of Way Kambas have been destroyed," another environment activist, Mashuri Abdullah, said.
The US$600,000 provided by international donors to restore the National Park and the eastern coast of Lampung seems to have gone down the drain as the provincial administration has been unable to settle the land disputes nor curb rampant forest devastation in the province.