Sumatra wildlife fight to survive

Sumatra wildlife fight to survive

Haidir Anwar Tanjung, The Jakarta Post, Pekanbaru, Riau

Wild animals in Sumatra are competing harder for natural
resources with people seeking profits from forests and other
natural resources, experts said last week.

Worse yet, these wild animals are also hunted by unscrupulous
profit seekers, endangering their existence, they said.

According to the National Biodiversity National Reference Unit
(BNRU), clashes between people and wild animals in May 2002 alone
resulted in the killing of at least 17 elephants in Barumun in
South Tapanuli regency, North Sumatra, while clashes with tigers
in Basilam in Dumai regency, Riau, claimed the lives of five
people.

"The conflict is mostly driven by people's activities in
forests. These people are often unfair and lack proper respect
for wild animals' survival and habitat," BNRU director Adi
Susminato said here last week.

He added that large-scale plantation development, forest
burning and illegal hunting contributed significantly to the
conflicts.

Indonesia's World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Sumatra director
Nazir Foead indicated that the human-wildlife conflict had posed
a serious threat to animal conservation.

"The conflict has reached a critical level and will impose a
burden on society if forests are continuously converted into
commercial estates," he said.

I Made Subadia, director general of forest protection and
nature conservation at the Ministry of Forestry, concurred and
said that if no drastic measures were taken animals like rhinos,
tigers and elephants would eventually become extinct.

Speaking to The Jakarta Post here, Made said the population of
those wild animals had shrunk over the years, with elephants in
Sumatra registered at between 2,330 and 3,354, tigers at 500 and
rhinos at only 132 in 2001.

Meanwhile, the spokesman for the Kerinci Seblat National Park,
Rudyanto Tjahyo was quoted by Antara as saying in Padang on
Saturday that only 10 two-horn Sumatra rhinos were now living in
the park. All of them lived in the North Bengkulu regency area.

To protect these rhinos, Rudyanto said the park management, in
cooperation with the Indonesian Rhino Conservation Association,
had taken steps to protect the North Bengkulu regency area of the
park from human activities.

In an effort to protect wild animals in Sumatra, Made Subadia
said the government had helped establish rhino and tiger
protection areas as well as an elephant training center.

The government was also considering a proposal from the Riau
province to make the Tesso Nilo forests in Kuantan Singingi,
Kampar and Pelalawan regencies an elephant conservation center.

"But in the field, this policy has not produced optimum
results because of persistent disturbances from irresponsible
people," Made said.