Villagers flee after elephant trample elderly woman

Villagers flee after elephant trample elderly woman

Oyos Saroso H.N., Bandarlampung

Thirteen wild elephants went on a rampage last week in Tanggamus,
Lampung, trampling an elderly woman to death and destroying
dozens of huts in a forest reserve.

Rusmini, 60, a resident of nearby Sidimulyo village, was
killed last Thursday while harvesting coffee with other villagers
in a makeshift camp as the elephants ran amok, forcing them to
flee their temporary shelters. Planting coffee inside the
reserve is illegal.

The elephants are still active in the area and considered
dangerous.

Nature Lovers Group executive director Joko Santoso said the
encroachment into the elephants' natural habitat by people,
logging activities, and the Batutegi hydro-power electricity
generating project had contributed to the rampage.

"Water has started to fill the Batutegi reservoir, and as a
result, the elephants can't cross to the other side for food, as
they could previously," he said on Wednesday.

He said similar incidents frequently occurred in forests that
bordered residential areas. Even tigers would venture outside the
forests and attack locals, he said.

"They usually become upset when their habitat is constricted
by human activities such as planting coffee on the edges of
forested areas. Every harvest season, residents erect makeshift
huts in and around forest reserves, which can provoke the
elephants," he said.

The Batutegi reservoir and the often-illegal land clearance
had reduced their habitat and could cause stress to the
elephants, Joko said.

South Bukit Barisan National Park head Tamen Sitorus said that
as long as the elephants' habitat was gradually being encroached
on, the attacks would continue.

"We have reminded residents not to clear forests to open up
coffee plantations, but they are stubborn and continue to do so,"
he said.

As many as 30,270 hectares of the park have been badly damaged
due to illegal land clearance. At least 15,117 families are at
present clearing land by felling trees to open plantations inside
the park, Tamen said.

Forest areas outside the national park also have not been
spared from logging activities. Residents cultivate coffee,
pepper, rice and cocoa on the cleared land.

Tamen said widespread wildlife poaching was another reason
that prompted aggressive behavior among the animal population in
the park.

Poaching activities had started in the park in 1993 and
worsened from 1998 onwards, he said.

If poaching activities in the area were not immediately
stopped, wild animal species like tigers, rhinoceroses and
elephants would be extinct in the next five to ten years, he
warned.

The park is located on the southern tip of Sumatra island and
spans around 356,800 hectares. It was made a national park in
1982 and has been made into a nature resource preservation area,
with about 300,000 hectares administered by two regencies; West
Lampung and Tanggamus. The remaining 60,000 hectares are inside
the Bengkulu province.

Park data shows that from 1993 to 2003, more than 200
elephants have been killed and more than three tons of ivory has
been traded in the forest.

Hundreds of tigers and dozens of rhinos have been killed.
Tiger pelts and rhino horns are traded domestically and exported.