Sulawesi national park last refuge for threatened wildlife
Sulawesi national park last refuge for threatened wildlife
By Robert J. Lee and Suparman Rais
BOGANI NANI WARTABONE NATIONAL PARK, N. Sulawesi (JP):
Crouching beneath the rain-forest canopy in the dead of night, a
group of 40 people -- university students, NGO members and forest
rangers -- is following the torch beams with their binoculars to
get a good view of a rare Sulawesi masked owl.
As part of a training program that teaches the field skills
these individuals will use to monitor environmental change, the
group had just spent all day learning about birds. Not your
average sparrow, mind you, but the unique Sulawesi birds that
occur in their own backyard, the Bogani Nani Wartabone National
Park (formerly known as Dumoga Bone National Park).
Visiting the 2,871 km2 national park is a thrill. Hornbills
gliding above, colorful parrots squawking among the high canopy,
mud-laden babirusa dashing through shrubs and macaques romping
all remind us how special Bogani Nani is.
With the high rates of endemic, rare and endangered birds,
mammals and reptiles, it is eastern Indonesia's most important
terrestrial protected area. And to make a statement like that,
in a country such as this, whose biodiversity is the highest in
the world, is no small compliment.
Results from a recent Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)
biodiversity survey suggest that this park is probably the last
great stronghold for such rare and threatened species of birds
and mammals of Sulawesi.
Sulawesi holds a special position in global biodiversity
conservation. The island is a gallery of evolutionary originals,
boasting some very strange and unique looking animals. The
babirusa (it's name means "pig-deer") is undeniably ugly; gray
and hairless, two spiral tusks curl upward inches away from their
icy-white eyes dotted by tiny black pupils.
The seven species of Sulawesi macaques are tail-less, each
species having a unique pattern of calluses on their backsides.
The temperamental goat-sized buffalo, the anoa, is crowned with
two conical horns. The two cuscus species, bear cuscus and dwarf
cuscus (phalanger), are marsupial endemics which use their long
curling tail as an extra hand that twirls around branches,
leaving their hands free to pluck leaves and fruits.
The tuxedoed, blue-helmeted maleo birds dig pits near hot
springs or on beaches to lay their gigantic eggs.
In a way, we wish the story of how they came to be were a
Just-so Story, for then there would be a guaranteed happy ending.
Here's how it all started.
About 40 million years ago, a northward Australian plate
crashed into the Asian plate creating eastern Sulawesi. Eastern
Sulawesi proceeded to move northward and crash into western
Sulawesi, beginning the fusion between the two around 15 million
years ago.
This tectonic scrum led to the island's present shape with
mountain peaks jutting every which way, deep valleys, depressions
and massive volcanism. Since the two parts of Sulawesi came from
different places, they each brought with them a different mix of plants and
animals.
Transitional zone
This mixing of plants and animals created a biological
transitional zone between Asia and Australasia called Wallacea
for which Sulawesi is the heart.
Due to its large size combined with its geographic isolation
from other animal and plant populations, Sulawesi has one of the
highest levels of species endemism in the world.
Of the known Sulawesi fauna 62 percent of mammals, 27 percent
of birds, 32 percent of reptiles and 76 percent of amphibian
species are found only in Sulawesi.
The mammal species hit an extraordinary 98 percent if bats are
not included. In comparison, endemism on the neighboring islands
of Borneo and Sumatra for mammals is a fifth, and birds less than
a quarter of the percentage of endemics in Sulawesi.
Unfortunately, many of these species are quickly disappearing
from forests throughout Sulawesi. Large mammals including
babirusa, anoa and macaques are hunted for the meat market in
eastern North Sulawesi. With increases in wealth and North
Sulawesi's human population, the demand for bushmeat has
increased over the past 15 years.
In addition, Sulawesi has one of the highest rates of lowland
rainforest loss in the world. At present, babirusa and anoa have
virtually disappeared from most north and southeast Sulawesi
forests, and macaque and bear cuscus populations are small and
isolated.
And maleo nesting sites have been and are being abandoned and
destroyed in great numbers.
One shining hope for Sulawesi biodiversity conservation is
Bogani. The recent WCS wildlife population survey results for
large mammals, including babirusa, anoa and Gorontalo macaque,
were higher than expected. Nineteen globally threatened bird
species, such as the maleo, yellow-breasted racquet-tail, blue-
faced rail, and Matinan blue flycatcher, and a total of 195 bird
species have been observed.
Bogani faces problems common to all parks in Indonesia.
Illegal mining, logging and hunting have been rampant since its
establishment. Staff technical capacity has been low. Management
plans have not been followed.
Park boundaries remain unclear. Relations with neighboring
communities were bitter, and any effort toward strengthening
management was seen by communities as yet another strong-arm
tactic by the central government to marginalize them. Policies
aimed at increasing agricultural productivity have stirred land
clearing in and around park areas. Most recently, the park's
operational budget was cut by 40 percent. These trends threaten
to turn Bogani into one of the more than 350 "paper parks" set
aside by the government.
The park is clearly important for global biodiversity
conservation. The park also provides an enormous range of
economic and ecological benefits. It maintains water quality for
surrounding rivers and lakes that people in surrounding towns
use, protects the watershed of the Dumoga River which
irrigates 11,000 hectares of rice fields, prevents soil erosion
and supports the web of life that allows people in surrounding
areas to harvest fish and produce agricultural crops.
From the new research findings on the park's flora and fauna,
we are now in the position to really do some good. We simply
must. The kind of training described earlier is part of the plan.
But we need all people and groups who have a claim on, or care
about the park, to work together. And this is a major challenge.
The thing that keeps us moving toward that goal though is
that Bogani is truly a special place. Government, non-governmental
organizations, universities, and people living around the park are all
involved in turning Bogani into an effective and functioning national park.
The ecological monitoring we do is critical, but it is no good
to know the numbers if all we see is the numbers of animals going
down. Through a process of consensus building and innovative
programs in the way of alternative financing, multi-stakeholder
management, intensive patrolling and monitoring, technical
training and awareness-building, a program to preserve the park's
biodiversity and, in turn, safeguard the local ecology and
economy is being built.
R. Lee heads the Sulawesi project for WCS and S. Rais is the
head of Bogani Nani Wartabone National Park.