Dogs & dragons

[Guest guest]

The most significant line in the following article about

increased conflict between humans and Komodo dragons is this:

 

>They [the Nature Conservancy] declared canines an alien species, and

>outlawed the villagers' dogs, which used to keep dragons away from

>homes.

 

 

The " tradition " of feeding live goats to the dragons is

mentioned in the next sentence in a context which suggests that

" sacrificing " goats replaced leaving offal from hunted animals out

for dragons to consume, for two reasons: a depleted population of

hunted species, due to pressure from the expanding human population,

and an increasing volume of thrill-seeking visitors:

 

>Park authorities banned the goat sacrifices, previously staged on

>Komodo for the benefit of picture-snapping tourists.

 

 

Meanwhile, the dogs and dragons appear to have had more or

less the same relationship as dogs and leopards in much of India and

Africa: when dogs are numerous enough, they consume most of the

discarded offal and pack up to keep leopards out of proximity to

human settlements. When the dog population diminishes, the dogs are

no longer capable of forming packs large enough to deter a leopard,

or a dragon, and are themselves picked off one by one by hungry

leopards (and dragons) who would not venture in among a pack.

 

The arrogance of the Nature Conservancy, which is among the

wealthiest conservation organizations in the world, is demonstrated

by this quote, about a child who was killed by a Komodo dragon while

answering nature's call:

 

>The boy " shouldn't have crouched like a prey species in a place

>where dragons live, " says Marcus Matthews-Sawyer, tourism, marketing

>and communications director at Putri Naga Komodo

 

Give people a choice between their children's safety and

conserving Komodo dragons, and Komodo dragons will be extinct

yesterday.

 

In view of that, Marcus Matthews-Sawyer's office might be

usefully converted into a safe communal latrine. Or his salary might

be diverted into providing safe latrines to the villages, to do

literally what it now does in metaphor.

 

 

 

 

When Good Lizards Go Bad: Komodo Dragons Take Violent Turn

Villagers Blame Environmentalists For Reptiles' Mood; Ban On Goat Sacrifice

By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV

August 25, 2008; Page A1, Wall Street Journal

 

KAMPUNG KOMODO, Indonesia -- At least once a week, an unwelcome

intruder crawls under a clapboard wall and, forked tongue darting,

lumbers its way into Syarif Maulana's classroom.

[_ Komodo dragon]

 

" Then, everyone screams, there is no more school, and we all run away

very fast, " says the 10-year-old boy. " We are very afraid. "

 

The intruder, a Komodo dragon, is the world's largest lizard, an

ancient, fierce carnivore found only on a handful of remote islands

in eastern Indonesia. Reaching 10 feet in length, the dragons feed on

buffaloes, deer and an occasional human. Just a year ago, a boy about

Syarif's age died in a dragon's jaws, his bones smashed against rocks

to facilitate reptilian digestion.

 

That killing, and a spate of other close encounters, has fanned a

panic in the dragons' main habitat, the Komodo National Park. Touted

by Indonesia as its " Jurassic Park, " this rocky, barren archipelago

is home to some 2,500 dragons and nearly 4,000 people, clustered in

four fishing villages of wooden stilt houses.

 

These locals have long viewed the dragons as a reincarnation of

fellow kinsfolk, to be treated with reverence. But now, villagers

say, the once-friendly dragons have turned into vicious man-eaters.

And they blame policies drafted by American-funded environmentalists

for this frightening turn of events.

 

" When I was growing up, I felt the dragons were my family, " says

55-year-old Hajji Faisal. " But today the dragons are angry with us,

and see us as enemies. " The reason, he and many other villagers

believe, is that environmentalists, in the name of preserving nature,

have destroyed Komodo's age-old symbiosis between dragon and man.

 

For centuries, local tradition required feeding the dragons -- which

live more than 50 years, can recognize individual humans and usually

stick to fairly small areas. Locals say they always left deer parts

for the dragons after a hunt, and often tied goats to a post as

sacrifice. Island taboos strictly prohibited hurting the giant

reptiles, a possible reason why the dragons have survived in the

Komodo area despite becoming extinct everywhere else.

 

'Sacred Duty'

 

" For us, giving food to the dragons is an obligation, our sacred

duty, " says Hajji Adam, headman of the park's biggest village,

Kampung Komodo.

[komo]

Yaroslav Trofimov/ The Wall Street Journal

A view of the Kampung Komodo island.

 

Indonesia invited the Nature Conservancy, a Virginia-based

environment protection group, to help manage the park in 1995. An

Indonesian subsidiary of the group, called Putri Naga Komodo, gained

a tourism concession for the park in 2005 and is investing in the

conservation effort some $10 million of its own money and matching

financing from international donors.

 

With this funding and advice, park authorities put an end to

villagers' traditional deer hunting, enforcing a prohibition that had

been widely disregarded. They declared canines an alien species, and

outlawed the villagers' dogs, which used to keep dragons away from

homes. Park authorities banned the goat sacrifices, previously staged

on Komodo for the benefit of picture-snapping tourists.

 

" We don't want the Komodo dragon to be domesticated. It's against

natural balance, " says Widodo Ramono, policy director of the Nature

Conservancy's Indonesian branch and a former director of the

country's national park service. " We have to keep this conservation

area for the purpose of wildlife. It is not for human beings. "

 

When people hunt deer, it poses a mortal threat to the dragons, which

disappeared from a small island near Komodo after poachers decimated

deer stocks there, officials say. " If we let the locals hunt again,

the dragons will be gone, " says Vinsensius Latief, the national

park's chief for Komodo island. " If we are not strict in enforcing

the ban, everything here will be destroyed. "

 

But, while the deer population remains stable in the park, many

dragons these days prefer to seek easier prey in the vicinity of

humans. They frequently descend from the hills to the villages,

hiding under stilt houses and waiting for a chance to snap at passing

chicken or goats. Much to the fury of villagers, park authorities,

while endorsing the idea in principle, so far haven't acted on

repeated requests to build dragon-proof fences around the park's

inhabited areas. The measure is estimated to cost about $5,000 per

village.

 

" People are scared because, every day, the dragons come down and eat

our goats, " complains Ibrahim Hamso, secretary of the Kampung Rinca

village. " Today it's a goat, and tomorrow it can be our child. "

 

'Crazed With Blood'

 

A year ago, a 9-year-old named Mansur was one such victim. The boy

went to answer the call of nature behind a bush near his home in

Kampung Komodo. In broad daylight, as terrified relatives looked on,

a dragon lunged from his hideout, took a bite of the boy's stomach

and chest, and started crushing his skull.

 

" We threw branches and stones to drive him away, but the dragon was

crazed with blood, and just wouldn't let go, " says the boy's father,

Jamain, who, like many Indonesians, goes by only one name.

 

Unlike in the U.S. and many other Western countries, park rangers

here don't routinely put down animals that develop a taste for human

flesh.

 

A few months later, Jamain's neighbor Mustaming Kiswanto, a

38-year-old who makes a living selling dragon woodcarvings to

tourists, and whose son had been bitten by a dragon, was attacked by

another giant lizard after falling asleep. In June, five European

divers, stranded in an isolated part of the park, said they

successfully fended off an aggressive dragon by throwing their weight

belts at it.

 

One of the most famous lizard attacks occurred half a world away in

2001, when a Komodo dragon kept by the Los Angeles Zoo tried to

ingest the foot of Phil Bronstein, then editor of the San Francisco

Chronicle and husband of actress Sharon Stone.

 

To the villagers in Komodo, the recent incidents provide clear

evidence of an ominous change in reptile behavior. " I don't blame the

dragons for my boy's death. I blame those who forbade us from

following custom and feeding them, " says Jamain. " If it weren't for

them, my boy would still be alive. "

 

Officials at the Nature Conservancy's Indonesian headquarters in Bali

dismiss such widespread belief about a connection between the attacks

and the ban on feeding the dragons as " superstition. " The group and

its Komodo subsidiary reject any responsibility for Mansur's death.

 

The boy " shouldn't have crouched like a prey species in a place where

dragons live, " says Marcus Matthews-Sawyer, tourism, marketing and

communications director at Putri Naga Komodo. " You've got to be very

careful about extrapolating and drawing any conclusions. "

 

Tackling Fears

 

Despite such disbelief in the Komodo villagers' theories, executives

at the Nature Conservancy's headquarters in the U.S. pledge to reach

out and tackle local fears. " Any concern expressed by the villagers

will be taken seriously and we will address it if we can, " says Chief

Communications Officer James R. Petterson. " The Komodo effort is a

work in progress. "

 

Dragon and man could coexist here in harmony in the past, Komodo park

officials add, because at the time the area's human population was a

fraction of today's size. Now, with local villages pushing deeper

inland and attracting new settlers from elsewhere in Indonesia,

conflict may be inevitable -- and even a fence won't be able to

prevent dragon infiltrations.

 

" The smell of the village -- goats, chicken, drying fish -- all this

invites the dragons, " says Mr. Latief. " And if the dragons can't grab

the animals, they will bite the villagers. "

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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