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.