Belgium to help fund Indonesian elephant conservation center

Antara 15 Dec 10;

Pekanbaru (ANTARA News) - The Belgian government will provide 200,000 euros in assistance for the construction of a Sumatran elephant conservation center in the Tesso Nilo National Park (TNTN), Riau Province, a local official has said.

"Belgium will provide 200 thousand euros for the elephant conservation center in TNTN," director of the Forest Investigation and Protection of the Forestry Ministry, Rafles Panjaitan, said here Wednesday.

He said the foreign funding program was expected to be started in January 2011 and the funds would be channeled to Indonesia through a Belgian donor agency.
The funds would be disbursed in stages. As much as 50,000 euros would be disbursed next year.

The elephant conservation center in TNTN would replace one located in Minas, Siak district, because the location in Minas was considered no longer suitable as forest areas there had been changed into oil palm plantations and oil mining sites.

"The location in Minas is no longer suitable for the elephant conservation center because there are oil pipelines and oil palm plantations around the area," Rafles said.
He said that dozens of tame elephants in Minas will be moved to TNTN in anticipation of unexpected things between the elephants and the people around TNTN.

Tesso Nilo National Park is the largest habitat of the Sumatran elephant (Elephant maximus sumatranus) remaining in Riau and inhabited by about 100 wild elephants.

Elephant Sanctuary Set For Riau National Park
Jakarta Globe 19 Dec 10;

Pekanbaru. Officials at the Tesso Nilo National Park in Riau announced on Sunday they would set up a 40-hectare conservation area within the park for Sumatran elephants.

Hayani Suprahman, head of the park, said work on the conservation area would begin before the end of the year, centered in Lubuk Kembang Bungo village in Pelalawan district.

He said the site was chosen because it was close to an existing elephant training center run by the environmental group WWF and several private organizations.

Elephants from that center are used to drive off marauding herds of wild elephants that encroach into farms and villages.

Hayani said the conservation project would be funded through a 200,000 euro ($260,000) grant from Belgium’s Paradiso Park.

Raffles Panjaitan, director of forest protection at the Ministry of Forestry, said on Friday that Taman Safari wildlife park near Bogor would also benefit from the tie-up with Paradiso Park.

He said the grant was part of a deal to loan two elephants to the Belgian park in 2009.

“In addition to the 200,000 euro grant for the elephant conservation area in Tesso Nilo, Paradiso Park officials have also agreed to lend three giraffes to Taman Safari,” he said.

There are an estimated 80 Sumatran elephants in Tesso Nilo, which at almost 40,000 square kilometers is one of the largest national parks in Sumatra.

According to the WWF, 3,350 Sumatran elephants remain in the wild, most under threat from habitat loss, which forces them to encroach on farmlands and often leads to them being killed.


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