Tourists 'shoot' rhinos at Ujung Kulon park
Tourists 'shoot' rhinos at Ujung Kulon park
By Jim Della-Giacoma
UJUNG KULON, Indonesia (Reuter): At the turn of century Europeans came to this isolated peninsula on the tip Java to hunt the endangered Javan rhinoceros.
These days an increasing number of tourists visit the Ujung Kulon National Park hoping to shoot the shy beast, not with guns but cameras.
Park rangers estimate only about 60 rhinos still live in the thick undergrowth of the park, which 60 years ago was a game reserve, and in 1992 was declared, along with the Komodo islands, as one of Indonesia's first World Heritage areas.
But the long odds of getting a snapshot of a rhino does not deter a new breed of "eco-tourists" from trekking below the lush and humid jungle canopy, with all its beauty and discomfort, with hope in their hearts and sweat on their brows.
"It's very difficult to see a rhino," Sumanta, a forest guide who has worked in the Ujung Kulon park for 31 years, told Reuters recently while guiding visitors on a jungle hike.
"You need to spend much time, at least a month, here, to be sure of success," he said.
But in the 18th century rhinos were so numerous and damaging to plantations in Java that the government paid money to have them killed. Five hundred were bagged within two years.
The rhino population, for which no past estimates are available, began declining rapidly in the early part of this century after game hunting began.
Park rangers say there is no evidence of poaching of the rhino, which fetches a high price in the illegal wildlife trade.
It's ironic that the Java rhino lives on the isolated diamond- shape peninsula on the most densely populated island on earth.
"It would have been kind of fun to see a rhino," said an U.S. tourist who earlier this month walked through the park's forests, "but maybe we should just let them be".
The rhino is just one jewel in a sparkling crown of natural wealth only 200 km (124 miles) from Indonesia's heavily-polluted capital of Jakarta.
The 120,000 hectare (296,520 acres) park, which includes a number of islands, is also home to five species of primates, of which three are endemic to Java, and the endangered Javan wild dog. Some species of deer and wild bulls are also found.
The reef-studded waters that surround it and the sweeping wide white sand beaches are home to a variety of coral reef fish, sea turtles, dolphins and other forms of marine life, while crocodiles live in its estuaries.
Despite its proximity to a big population center, official figures show only about 3,000 people stayed overnight last year on Peucang Island.
Conservationists say one of the reasons Ujung Kulon remains an untouched area of wilderness on Java is the 1883 eruption of the Krakatau volcano in the adjacent Sunda Straits which killed most people living there.
The many tidal waves measuring up to 40 metres high that accompanied the eruption killed more than 36,000 people living on the coastal lowlands on western Java and southern Sumatra.
Population pressure remains one of the greatest threats to the park as people living in adjacent villages violate the park to cultivate crops, gather wood and hunt animals.
Indiani, project leader of the World Wide Fund for Nature's Ujung Kulon project, told Reuters alternative sources of income need to be found for locals living on the park fringe.
"The local people need to be encourage not to hunt the animals as well as be given alternative ways of making a living by setting up homestays for tourists and making carvings to sell to them," she said.