INDONESIAN ELEPHANTS LOSING GROUND

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Elephants in the wars and losing jungle

Sian Powell, Jakarta correspondent

March 03, 2006

 

AS autopsies began yesterday on five wild elephants poisoned in Indonesia's

remote Riau province, a herd of 39 elephants rampaged through a village in

the same region, crushing four houses and forcing locals to flee.

 

In Balai Raja, elephants on the warpath had forced 59 families to take

refuge in the village hall.

 

" The locals haven't been able to sleep in their houses for a week, " said

World Wide Fund for Nature Indonesia's human-elephant conflict officer,

Samsuardi.

 

The elephant wars in Riau are symptomatic of the plight of wild animals in

Indonesia. As the population grows, people increasingly encroach on forests

and jungles, squeezing the habitat of the archipelago's tigers and

elephants, deer and orang-utans.

 

Following a spate of tiger poisonings in West Sumatra, environmentalists are

concerned elephants are in farmers' sights.

 

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Mr Samsuardi said there should be 28,000ha of jungle in Mahato district,

where the elephant corpses were found, but it was estimated the unauthorised

depredations of farmers had left only 10,000ha. " We don't know who did the

poisoning, " he said. " But there is conflict between the elephants and the

local farmers. There's not enough room for the elephants, because of the

habitations and garden. And this conflict is getting more serious. "

 

It seemed the elephants had been poisoned with potassium cyanide, with a

great deal of foam found on their mouths, he said, adding that

conservationists would test the corpses. The poisonings were reported to the

police, Mr Samsuardi said, but they had apparently taken no action. Riau

police said yesterday they had not heard of the matter.

 

" We don't know anything about that, " said Officer Azwir Anthony. " Maybe it's

in another area. "

 

The jungle around the village of Balai Raja has been sliced from 16,000ha to

less than 300ha, he said, which was not even enough for a single elephant to

live comfortably. The rest had been taken for palm-oil plantations.

 

" So with 300ha, what can we do with these elephants? " he asked. " We have

seen a drastic reduction in the elephant population since the early 1980s

and if it keeps going like this, in a few years they will be extinct. "

 

Mr Samsuardi said he would try to use a type of cannon to make a loud noise

and disperse the elephants from Balai Raja. " But the difficulty is among

these 39 elephants there are five babies, " he said.

 

" And the elephant mothers are very emotional. "