Indonesia: Animals, humans in violent conflict in North Sumatra, Aceh

Apriadi Gunawan and Hotli Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post 2 Nov 15;

Potential conflicts between animals and human beings have continued to emerge in some regions on Sumatra, mostly because of severe disturbances to the animals’ original habitats.

In Besitang district, Langkat regency, North Sumatra, hundreds of families have been expressing anxiety after wild orangutans from the neighboring Mount Leuser National Park (TNGL) have repeatedly invaded their neighborhoods in search of food.

Hasan Basri, 50, of village IX, Halaban subdistrict, said several families were forced to flee their homes and stay at relatives’ houses because they feared being attacked by the wild orangutans. No fatalities have so far been reported from the incident.

“But the people here are worried,” Hasan told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.

He said that the presence of orangutans in the human residential complexes was an old story. Yet, in the last three months the occurrences have become more frequent. He blamed the phenomenon on the serious damage done to the forests in the national park by illegal logging activities.

“Orangutans enter our villages for food because their habitats have been damaged by illegal loggers,” Hasan said, adding that the animals damaged many of the people’s rubber plantations and durian trees, eating the plants’ young leaves.

To deal with the problem, he said, enraged people attacked the orangutans with air rifles and with bows and arrows.

A 50-year-old orangutan was recently found with 22 gunshot wounds all over its body. Volunteers attempted to save its life, but it later died.

Orangutan Information Center (OIC) director Panut Hadisiswoyo said that since 2013 the center had found seven Sumatran orangutans from North Sumatra and Aceh in critical conditions because of gunshot and stab wounds. They all eventually died as the wounds were too serious to heal.

He said for the last three years the center also saved 79 orangutans isolated in people’s fields and plantation areas. Of them, 69 percent were from Aceh and the remaining 31 percent were from North Sumatra, especially Langkat.

“To put an end to the conflict between orangutans and people, we urge all parties to stop deforestation in the Leuser ecosystem,” Panut said.

Meanwhile in Sejahtera hamlet, Rimba Raya subdistrict, Pintu Rime Gayo district, Bener Meriah regency, Aceh, people continue to stay in evacuation centers to avoid being attacked by herds of elephants.

“We are still traumatized. We are afraid to go back to our village,” Abdullah, one of the displaced residents, said on Sunday.

He said a herd of about 30 elephants had come to his village a few months before, killing a housewife and injuring her husband as they tried to escape. Their baby survived because the big animals did not hurt him.

“We just don’t want to have such an incident reoccur. That’s why we left our home,” Abdullah said.

Bener Meriah regency secretary Imarissiska said the regency administration had been overwhelmed by the task of removing herds of elephants from residential areas as they kept coming back.

For a short-term solution, he said, the administration was cooperating with the provincial Natural Resources Conservation Center (BKSDA) to get rid of the elephants using trained elephants belonging to the center.

“Hopefully we will start doing this on Monday, herding the animals back to their habitat,” Imarissiska said.

He said once the herd left, the administration would dig deep trenches to separate the villages from the herd and to prevent the elephants from coming back.

For a long-term solution, he said, the administration was planning to relocate the people to a new area. “This needs a huge amount of funds,” said Imarissiska, adding that cooperation with other affected regencies could also be undertaken to help the program.

The population of Sumatran elephants has fallen in the last four years and the International Union for Conservation of Nature has raised the threat status of the species from “emergency” to “critical”, one step below “extinction”.

Based on World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Indonesia data, Indonesia currently has about 2,000 individual wild elephants.