Sumatra to relocate Victims of killer elephants
Pastor Dale Morgan
Sumatra to relocate Victims of killer elephants*
From correspondents in Jakarta
April 25, 2007 11:41pm
Article from: Agence France-Presse
THOUSANDS of Indonesians will be relocated on Sumatra island after wild
elephants repeatedly attacked their villages, killing six people.
The local Government will move about 10,000 people living in Bukit
Barisan National Park, a protected habitat for the animals whose numbers
on the island are fast diminishing.
Villagers in the past have co-existed with the elephants in the
363,000ha park which has been declared a World Heritage Site.
But new communities were springing up in the park, encroaching on the
animals' habitat and causing a series of violent clashes, an official at
the Lampung provincial forestry office said.
“We need to relocate thousands of people living in the national park
zones to prevent the clashes from recurring,” official Arinal Junaidi said.
Conversation group WWF said the elephants had trampled six people to
death in the park in the past 12 months and destroyed villages and crops.
Nurchalis Fadli of WWF added that it appeared the same six female
elephants were involved the clashes, although it was unclear why.
“It was not their fault. The incidents have occurred in the elephants'
natural habitat,” Mr Fadli said.
He added the relocation of the villagers was a huge task, as they had
built communities and were farming crops.
WWF has also attempting to track the movement of the animals, by tagging
their necks with a device containing a global satellite positioning
system, Mr Fadli said.
Six elephants had been tagged since November, he added.
The WWF has said that elephants in Sumatra, one of two Indonesian
islands where they are found, were dying at an alarming pace with
numbers dropping by 75 per cent in just 18 years.
As of 2003, only about 350 to 430 wild elephants remained on the island
in seven provinces, it said.
Their natural habitat is being increasingly taken over by resettlement,
plantations and industrial estates.
About 1000 Borneo elephants are thought to be on that island.
Donny Gunariadi from the Wildlife Conservation Society said training
courses were being run on how to calmly ward off the animals.
“The people need to be trained to handle this matter. To protect them
and to prevent them from killing the elephants,” Mr Gunariadi said.