Indonesia: For Hungry Elephants, the Next Meal Could Be Poison

Tunggadewa Mattangkilang Jakarta Globe 22 Feb 12;

Nunukan, East Kalimantan. A parade of hungry elephants has been ransacking villages for food in the Tulin Onsoi subdistrict of Nunukan, East Kalimantan, destroying farms and angering residents who are threatening to kill the protected animals.

Villagers said the elephants appeared to be starving and had ruined their crops, including corn, coconuts, bananas and palm fruit.

“They destroyed our farms and ate our plants,” said Umar, a resident of Sekilan village in Tulin Onsoi.

Subdistrict head Santifil Oslo said that the elephants were hungry and, unable to find any more food in their habitat, had been running wild.

He said the forest where elephants used to live had been razed by palm oil plantations and mining companies.

“The elephants are too big to sustain themselves eating the companies’ plants, so they look outside their habitat and attack the villages, which still have many small trees,” Santifil said.

Umar demanded the government handle the elephants because they had caused big losses since 2007.

The residents, Umar said, plan to put poison on their land so that when the elephants eat them, they will no longer be a problem.

“The government should force the elephants back to the forests. If not, we will poison them to death,” he said.

An increase in the scale of operations of mining and palm-oil companies, which frequently slash and burn the forest for their sites, has caused the island’s forested areas to dwindle.

World Wide Fund for Nature East Kalimantan coordinator Wiwin Efendi said his organization was cooperating with the province’s Natural Resource Conservation Agency (BKSDA) to help the villagers force the elephants back to the forests without hurting the animals.

He said they would make a cannon from a iron pipe that could create a loud sound meant to scare the elephants away.

“We’re adopting the tool from Riau province in Sumatra, which faces similar problems,” he said.

“They can drive away elephants successfully.”

According to Wiwin, there are only around 40 elephants left within the subdistrict.

The WWF has reported that huge areas of forested land on the island have been lost, leading to a decline in the number of endemic species. The organization said the losses could be attributed to increased illegal logging and forest fires.

While the report categorized the populations of Borneo elephants and orangutans as fair, pygmy elephant populations were on the wane.

Their dwindling habitat means the endangered animals can now only be found in East Kalimantan and Malaysia’s Sabah and Sarawak states, according to the WWF’s report.

The WWF added that the province’s population numbered between 30 and 80 pygmy elephants, far fewer than the estimated 1,500 animals in Sabah.

Similar elephant raids on villages have also occurred in Sumatra, where the elephants face even worse conditions. The WWF predicts that they will be extinct on the island within about 30 years.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature has changed its classification of the Sumatran elephant from “endangered” to “critically endangered” on its list of threatened species, the WWF said.

The organization also attributed the decline largely to habitat deforestation and conversion for agricultural plantations. The IUCN said it had changed the classification because the creature, the smallest Asian elephant, had lost nearly 70 percent of its habitat and half of its population in a single generation.

Despite the elephant’s protected status under Indonesian law, 85 percent of its habitats are not safeguarded as they are situated outside officially protected areas.