The elephant cops: human-elephant conflict in Indonesia

Hotli Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post 2 Jun 09;

The noise of a loud explosion ripped through the quiet of West Aceh’s Sarah Deu forest, triggering the trumpeting of elephants that faded as the beasts moved deeper into the forest.

But unlike the frightening days before peace was negotiated in Aceh, the noise was not that of a real gunshot at all. Rather, it was a blank, fired by one of six forest rangers on patrol. Their job is to chase away the wild elephants that often enter the community’s market gardens, in particular the farms belonging to residents in the Sarah Deu area.

The six rangers, dressed in light-brown uniforms, follow a line of four elephants, their trainer riding on top, as they walk slowly through the forest. From time to time, as they accompany the elephants, the rangers fire shots from their artificial firearms.

“The noise of the explosion is very effective in chasing away wild elephants from a distance,” said Saifudin, one of the rangers in the patrol group.

Sarah Deu, in Sampoineit, is a beautiful forest area in West Aceh’s Ulu Masen Conservation zone.

Here, the waters of the rivers run pristine and clear, yet to be tainted by city pollution. The Ulu Masen Conservation zone is an area that combines lowland forest and upland forest, a combination that makes Ulu Masen forest unique.

The forest covers 738,855 hectares, according to research and satellite data, and spreads across five regencies in the northern part of Aceh province.

It is seen as a rich provider of environmental and economic benefits for the 2 million people living in Aceh – benefits in the form of clean water resources, flood and erosion prevention, fresh water preservation, fisheries, electric power generation, carbon production, forest products, forest conservation, knowledge and tourism.

The Ulu Masen area is also rich in a range of Sumatran flora and fauna, many of which are threatened by extinction. These include tigers, honey bears, Sumatran orangutans, Sumatran goats, rangkong birds and Asian elephants.

Yet despite all this, the forest, especially zones such as Sarah Deu that are close to inhabited areas, is starting to suffer from the impacts of local agriculture and farming. One of the consequences is a territorial battle between wild animals and humans taking place at the edge of the Ulu Masen forest.

It’s the elephants versus the humans.

Ironically, the conflict between animals and humans began to heat up after the conflict between different groups of people was ended with the signing of the peace accord between GAM (Free
Aceh Movement) and the Indonesian government, in Helsinki on Aug. 15, 2005.

According to the head of West Aceh regency, Azhar Abdurrahman, the elephant–human conflict has intensified in his jurisdiction since 2006.

“When Aceh achieved peace [between GAM and the government], people in this area of Sarah Deu started to experience conflict with wild animals, especially elephants,” Azhar told The Jakarta Post.

Azhar said that the conflict with elephants in West Aceh was a new post-conflict phenomenon. Before the peace accord, even despite the conflict, elephants never came down to the human settlements.
He believes the elephant disturbances started because farmers began to work their market gardens again, after abandoning them during the war.

Their farms cross the elephants’ tracks and encroach into the elephants’ habitat. When elephants return to their habitat, now farmed by local residents, the struggle for use of the land heats up.
West Java government records show that there have been several wild elephant disturbances this year, where the animals have trampled over local market gardens. One person was killed when he was trampled by an elephant that ran amok.

According to Saifudin, the head of Ie Jeurengeh, the closest village to Sarah Deu, almost every month wild elephants come down to settlements, wreaking havoc.

“This has made our village community very nervous,” he said. “Because if the elephants come down they will certainly damage the rice fields and our market gardens.”

The people residing in the four villages around Sarah Deu have often reported the problems to the government through the Natural Resource Conservation Office. But with little response by the government, people have taken the matter into their own hands — by killing some of those animals that are already facing extinction.

Some help is coming from Flora and Fauna International (FFI), which has been working with the provincial government, the Natural Resource Conservation Office and the local communities to form a unit to tackle the wild elephant problem – without harming the elephants.

The purpose of the unit, called the Conservation Response Unit (CRU), is to develop and implement responses to conflicts between wild animals and humans.

In the CRU are the forest rangers (penjaga hutan) and four trained elephant “police”, whose job is to keep wild elephants away from the human settlements.

The CRU base camp has been established right at the edge of the forest, bordering the area where the elephants roam. The community affected by the wild elephants donated the land for the camp.

Zulfahmi, the CRU leader in Sarah Deu, said forming the CRU and placing the elephant police in the forest were the first steps in minimizing the conflict between wild elephants and humans, with Sarah Deu made the headquarters “because the possibility of conflict in this area is classified as high”, he said.

The presence of the CRU, Zulfahmi believes, will be able to put an end to the battle between wild animals and humans, hopefully turning the terror zone into a peaceful and pleasant area.

As well as training elephants to police the forest, the CRU is also responsible for training rangers, who are young men recruited from the villages. Furthermore, FFI, through the CRU, is working to help community members understand how to best use the forest for the greatest economic benefit.
Part of the education was a lesson on crops that have commercial potential and that the wild elephants do not like.

“This is also one of the community tactics, to discourage the elephants from coming to the settlements in search of their favorite food,” Zulfahmi said.

The plan is to establish eight CRUs across Aceh. However, this depends on funding and community commitment to the program.

“For one CRU we need about Rp 1.2 billion [US$109,000] every year,” Zulfahmi said. “So when there are eight CRUs this means that we will need at least Rp 9 billion [$818,000] per year to support programs like this.”

The money goes toward covering the operational costs of the base camp, feeding the elephants and paying the rangers’ wages.

The four trained elephants currently in the CRU are named Ida, Suci, Haris and Mawong. Their seven trainers and leaders, known as mahouts, are elephant experts who accompany the elephants on their forest patrols.

The trained elephants follow a daily routine, revealed Sofyan, one of the mahouts. In the morning, they are taken to the river to bathe. They are then fed before heading out on patrol.

“As well as carrying out their patrols, all the elephants are often taken to spend some time in the forest,” Sofyan said. “In the afternoon the elephants return to base camp for further training.”

Sofyan points out that there would be no conflict between the elephants and humans if humans better understood how elephants behave.

“Elephants are sweet and obedient animals,” he said. “The proof is that these elephants that we use can become elephant police, and will make peace between humans and the wild elephants.”

An important aspect is that elephants form and use regular tracks for passing through a forest. The elephant herds use these defined tracks year after year and without incident – unless one has become the site for a market garden or settlement, Sofyan said.

“So it’s not that the elephants are damaging the market gardens, but that people are putting their market gardens and houses in the elephants’ areas.”