05 Apr
2006 - Sumatra, Indonesia – A coalition of conservation
organizations, including WWF, has launched a new
interactive mapping tool on elephant populations
and forest cover on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
Sumatran elephants in Riau have
declined by nearly 75 per cent over the past eleven
years as a result of a shrinking forest habitat.
Without improved management, it is likely they
could face extinction in another five years. In
2003, there were approximately 400 Sumatran elephants
in Riau.
The interactive map helps readers
visualize forest loss in Sumatra’s Riau Province
since 1982. In addition to identifying protected
areas in the province, it also identifies companies
whose operations have replaced forests and companies
who hold licenses to convert additional forest.
The map also shows distribution of elephants and
information on elephant-human conflict.
As forest cover in Riau has
disappeared as a result of deforestation and land
conversion, particularly conversion to oil palm
plantations, elephant populations have shrunk
and human-wildlife conflict has increased.
A WWF investigation in Riau
has found that since 2000, sixteen people have
died in elephant encounters, and 45 elephants
have died from poisoning or poaching. An additional
201 elephants were captured by the government
to mitigate conflict. Forty-five of those died
as a result of the captures.
WWF recently discovered that
ten endangered wild Sumatran elephants have been
kept chained to trees without enough food or water
in central Riau after being made homeless by the
complete destruction of their forest. The elephants
were raiding crops and threatening a nearby village
before being captured by local authorities. The
Riau government said it wanted to capture and
translocate all of the elephants to the newly
designated Tesso Nilo National Park.
Currently, only 38,000ha of
the Tesso Nilo National Park have been protected
out of a proposed 100,000ha.
“The entire area must be protected before it can
be considered as a feasible location for the captured
elephants,” said Nazir Foead, Head of WWF Indonesia’s
Species Programme.
“These ten elephants are the
latest casualties in the escalating human-elephant
conflict in central Sumatra, the direct result
of uncontrolled destruction of their forest habitat.
These elephants need room to live, which means
ending problematic pulp and oil palm development.”
The Indonesian Ministry of Forestry
and NGOs developed a human-elephant conflict mitigation
protocol for Riau that would avoid the kinds of
cases that have occurred in recent weeks. The
protocol is aimed at working with local communities
on mitigating the conflict without the need to
capture elephants.
In addition, WWF is working
with Riau Province's Natural Resource Conservation
Agency and the communities surrounding Tesso Nilo
to avoid losses from raiding elephants. Since
2004, losses declined dramatically, no houses
have been destroyed and there have been no loss
of human or elephant lives.
END NOTES:
• The interactive map was produced
by Eyes on the Forest, a coalition of three local
conservation organizations in Riau, Sumatra, Indonesia:
WWF’s Indonesia's Tesso Nilo Programme, Jikalahari
(Forest Rescue Network Riau) and Walhi Riau (Friends
of the Earth Indonesia). Eyes on the Forest was
launched in December 2004 to investigate the state
of Riau's forests and the players who influence
it.
• Data for the interactive map
has been collected since 2000 by WWF-Indonesia
and Indonesia’s Natural Resource Conservation
Agency (BKSDA) in Riau.
