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.