Wild elephants ransack houses, force farmers to flee in Aceh

Ibnu Mat Noor, The Jakarta Post, Banda Aceh

Wild elephants once again came out of the jungle in West Aceh regency and destroyed houses and land belonging to farmers, who were forced to flee their villages.

The elephants have been terrorizing the villagers for the last two weeks, and residents have asked the local government for help in driving the elephants away.

Teuku Raja Nyakseh, a local community leader in Ranto Panyang, Meureubo subdistrict, said the people forced from their homes had sought refuge in neighboring villages.

A similar incident last December left a farmer dead when he was trampled by several rampaging elephants.

Nyakseh asked the local security authorities to drive the elephants back into the jungle, away from the villages.

"There are only three elephants at the most running amok there, because the forest where they lived was destroyed," he said.

Meureubo subdistrict head Jamin Gapi confirmed that a 50-year- old farmer, Basyah Panyang, had been trampled to death by elephants in Buloh village on Dec. 15 last year.

In October 2001, at least 25 wild elephants destroyed 14 houses and several plots of farm land at transmigration areas in the villages of Bukit Linteung and Seureukey in Tanah Tambo Aye subdistrict, East Java, according to Seureukey village head Sutrisno.

Andi Basirul, the head of Aceh's natural resources conservation office, said on Saturday he could do nothing about the elephants that were destroying houses and farm land in West Aceh.

"In this situation, all we can do is pray. It is impossible to go to the location because of security concerns," he told The Jakarta Post.

He said Aceh was home to about 400 elephants, including 28 tame elephants at training centers in Sareh, some 70 kilometers east of Banda Aceh, and Basitang regency, North Sumatra.

The 28 tame elephants were trained in Lhok Asan village, Kuta Makmur subdistrict, North Aceh, about 30 kilometers south of the city of Lhokseumawe.

These 28 elephants had to be moved from Lhok Asan when fighting between government troops and separatists from the Free Aceh Movement intensified in 1999.

Andi said the conflict contributed to the suffering of the tame elephants because their original training center was destroyed during the fighting three years ago.

"That's why we evacuated the elephants to other places," he added.

He said the wild elephants that were destroying farm land in West Aceh were attracted by the food they found outside the jungle, where much of their habitat had been destroyed.

"Because they are addicted to delicious food like rice and cassava, the elephants like to leave the forest and search for food in the fields near resettlement areas."

Unchecked logging in Gunung Leuser National Park forced at least 13 elephants out of the jungles of North Sumatra, causing chaos in nearby villages.

The elephants also attacked more than 10 tame elephants at the park's animal training center in Sekundur, leaving one of the tame animals dead.