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.