23/03/2006 - Gland, Switzerland
– WWF has discovered that ten endangered wild Sumatran
elephants are being kept chained to trees without
enough food or water in central Riau in Indonesia,
having been made homeless by the complete destruction
of their forest. The elephants were raiding crops
and threatening a nearby village before being captured
by local authorities ten days ago.
The ten elephants are part of
a herd of between 17 and 51 in Riau's Bengkalis
District. The Riau government said it wanted to
capture and translocate all of the elephants to
the newly designated Tesso Nilo National Park.
“These ten elephants are the latest
casualties in the escalating human-elephant conflict
in central Sumatra, the direct result of uncontrolled
destruction of their forest habitat,” said Nazir
Foead, Head of WWF Indonesia’s Species Programme.
“These elephants need room to live, which means
ending problematic pulp and oil palm development.
In the short term, they should get a suitable location.”
Currently, only 38,000ha of the
Tesso Nilo National Park have been protected out
of a proposed 100,000ha. The entire area must be
protected before it can be considered as a feasible
location for the captured elephants, WWF says.
“What we are seeing here is the
result of inaction and ineptitude,” said Foead.
“The local government has not implemented the Riau
Human-Elephant Conflict Mitigation Protocol agreed
upon in 2004, nor has it committed to stop zoning
elephant forest habitat for conversion. Illegal
logging and encroachment is even rife in those areas
that are officially protected.”
Six elephants were recently found
dead in an oil palm plantation at the border of
Riau and north Sumatra, apparently poisoned in retaliation
for raiding crops. Faced with rapidly shrinking
habitat and continual conflict with local people,
Riau's elephant population has been reduced from
an estimated 700 to 350 individuals in the last
seven years.
This case of human-elephant conflict
appears to be a direct result of forest clearing
in Riau's Libo Forest, one of the few remaining
retreats of the Sumatran elephant in central Sumatra.
Libo is rapidly being converted into plantations,
fields and settlements, often without the necessary
licenses. The Balai Raja Wildlife Sanctuary, within
the Libo forest block, contained about 16,000ha
of forest when it was declared in 1986. Today, only
260ha of forest cover remain. A multinational paper
company, Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), uses timber
cleared in Libo for its Riau mills.
WWF is urging the Riau government
to immediately stop all illegal logging, encroachment
and conversion of forest in Riau to oil palm and
pulp plantations. WWF is also calling on Riau authorities
to provide immediate food, water and medical treatment
to the ten elephants in their custody.
“Riau authorities do not have
a professional team to provide proper care to the
elephants,” said Foead.
“A new, more competent team, for
example from Lampung, in southern Sumatra, should
be brought in. We will be ready to help them.”
END NOTES:
• In 2004, NGOs and the Indonesian
Ministry of Forestry developed a human-elephant
conflict mitigation protocol for Riau that would
avoid the kinds of cases that have occurred in recent
weeks. If the protocol had been in place, it would
have taught communities how to mitigate human elephant
conflict without suffering losses and without the
need to capture elephants.
• Since 2004, WWF has worked with
Riau BKSDA (Riau Province's Natural Resource Conservation
Agency) and the communities surrounding the Tesso
Nilo forest to avoid losses from raiding elephants.
During that time, losses declined dramatically,
no houses have been destroyed and there have been
no loss of human or elephant lives.
• Riau has lost 57 percent of
its forests from 6.4 million hectares to 2.7 million
hectares – over the past 23 years, many of them
through illegal conversion. Riau has lost half of
its elephant population in the last seven years,
with the remaining population numbering only about
350. Protected areas for elephants like in Mahato
and Balai Raja have been almost completely cleared
illegally with no action by the local authority
to stop it. WWF calls on the government to immediately
stop all forest conversions in Riau.
• Elephant Poisonings: Results
from necropsies of the apparently poisoned elephants
are being analysed. The herd of six consisted of
three adult females, two adult males (both of which
were found with their tusks removed) and one male
calf. The herd was found dead in an oil palm plantation
in Mahato village, on the border between Riau and
North Sumatra Province. Mahato village is about
one kilometre from the Mahato Protected Forest,
all of which has been converted into settlements
and plantations since being declared a protection
forest in 1994.
• Crop-raiding Herd: Members of
Riau BKSDA and WWF's Tesso Nilo Flying Squad, with
two shifts of 300 men each of security forces from
the nearby Chevron Pacific Indonesia (CPI/Caltex)
oil and gas concession, are currently volunteering
to contain the 17 lost elephants near a small remaining
patch of forest. The teams prevent them from moving
toward houses and fields and only allow them to
move towards the forest. The herd will have to be
driven back to the area's largest forest, Libo,
which will require a major military-style operation,
options for which will be discussed at an emergency
meeting on Tuesday.
• Flying Squads: As a first, immediate
action, PHKA and WWF agreed to assemble a highly
mobile quick response team fashioned after the Tesso
Nilo Flying Squad that will support the affected
communities in case of future raids and patrol the
conflict areas. The flying squad approach has been
implemented in the buffer zone of Tesso Nilo National
Park. A squad consists of four rangers with noise
and light-making devices, a pick-up truck and trained
elephants who drive wild elephants back into the
forest whenever they threaten to enter villages.
Since it began operating in April 2004, one Tesso
Nilo Flying Squad has reduced the losses of a local
community from elephant raids from approximately
16 million Rupiah (US$1,1000) to around 1 million
Rupiah (US$109) per month on average.
