06 Mar 2008
- Tesso Nilo National Park, Sumatra – Communities
on the fringes of Sumatra’s Tesso Nilo National
park mixed tradition and conservation on
March 1, with a party to name and welcome
the newest members of the WWF’s Elephant
Flying Squad.
In Riau Province, the
flying squad are four adult elephants and
eight mahouts patrolling an area along the
National Park boundaries, keeping wild elephants
away from local communities and teaching
villagers non-lethal ways to protect their
crops.
About 80 guests helped
Nella celebrate her 1st birthday while Wan
Abu Bakar, Vice Governor of Riau Province,
officially conferred the name Tesso on the
younger calf, born three months ago. It
is a tradition in Indonesia to have a naming
ceremony soon after the birth of a baby.
When Vice Governor Wan
Abu Bakar arrived at the Flying Squad Camp,
he was greeted by a welcoming committee
of the four adult Flying Squad elephants.
Ria, Tesso’s mother, came forward bearing
a string of flowers that she placed around
the Vice Governor’s neck.
In addition to honoring
the tradition, the naming ceremony and birthday
celebration had a serious conservation purpose.
The head of Tesso Nilo
National Park noted in a speech the success
of the Flying Squad in minimizing human-elephant
conflict around the park.
The park head called
for greater collaboration for effective
human-elephant conflict mitigation in the
park and for efforts to safeguard the national
park.
WWF is working to see
the park expanded from 38,000 to 100,000
hectares to ensure enough habitat for a
viable elephant population in Riau Province.
The Vice Governor, who
also sits on the trustee board of the Provincial
Team of Human-Wildlife Conflict Handling,
promised to protect the forest in Riau Province
that serves as elephant habitat.
As shrinking habitat
in Riau leads to greater human-elephant
conflict, he hopes that the newly established
Provincial Team will be a success in mitigating
human-elephant conflict, just as the Flying
Squad has done in Tesso Nilo.
And how do elephants
celebrate? With brownies! Following tradition,
Vice Governor fed the treats (baked especially
for the elephants out of corn, palm sugar,
minerals and oats) to Tesso’s mother to
mark the naming of her son and to Lisa,
Nella’s mother, on the occasion of her calf’s
birthday.
Tesso and Nella seemed
mostly oblivious to the celebration going
on around them, sticking close to their
mothers’ sides. Tesso was born on 16 November
2007 and Nella was born on 23 February 2007.
Both calves were fathered
by wild elephants and the pregnancies were
welcome surprises to the Flying Squad mahout
team. Nella has already begun following
along with the Flying Squad on patrol occasionally
for fun, but still finds time to play with
Tesso.
The Vice Governor and
guests were enthusiastic to hear stories
about the life of the Flying Squad elephants,
all of whom were moved from government-run
camps where conflict elephants are kept
to work with WWF in 2004. It was indeed
a day of the elephant.
Information on the WWF
Elephant Flying Squad:
In 2004, WWF introduced the first Elephant
Flying Squad to Riau Province in central
Sumatra, to a village near the newly established
Tesso Nilo National Park. It was a way to
bring short-term relief to the intense conflict
between people and elephants there and to
create support for elephant conservation
among hard-hit communities.
Because the region around
Tesso Nilo is being cleared so rapidly and
the forest converted into agricultural plantations,
elephants with no place to go are forced
to wander in search of food, making farms
and commercial plantations an irresistible
temptation for elephant-sized appetites.
An Elephant Flying Squad
consists of eight mahouts (rangers) with
noise and light-making devices, a pick-up
truck and four trained elephants that drive
wild elephants back into the forest whenever
they threaten to enter villages. It has
proven to be very effective to reduce losses
suffered by local communities near Tesso
Nilo. Since it began operating in April
2004, the Tesso Nilo Flying Squad has reduced
the economic losses of a local community
from elephant raids.
The concept for the
flying squad has a long tradition in India
and other places, but had not been used
in Indonesia before. WWF recruited mahouts
and elephants from elephant camps that the
Indonesian government maintains. These eight
men and four elephants went through intensive
training to create bonds and make them effective
as a team to drive back wild elephants.
The project has been so successful that
companies working in the area are starting
their own Elephant Flying Squads to protect
crops from wild elephant raids.
Syamsidar Syamsidar, Communications Manager,
WWF-Indonesia Riau office