In Sumatra, a lone elephant leads rescuers on a cat-and-mouse chase

• Conservationists recently tried to relocate a wild elephant from one forest on the island of Sumatra to another.

• The elephant’s original home, the Bukit Tigapuluh forest, has been heavily fragmented by human activity, pushing the animals within into nearby villages.

• The elephant, a female named Karina, is the last remaining member of her herd.

TABIR, Indonesia — Several hours into the search, Karina was still hiding, deep in the undergrowth, far from the road.

The mission, led by a team of forest rangers, police officers and conservationists from Indonesia and abroad: find and sedate Karina, a female elephant who was the last remaining member of her herd. The team meant to relocate Karina from an area near the Bukit Tigapuluh forest to Harapan, another rainforest some 250 kilometers (155 miles) to the southeast. Karina had wandered from Bukit Tigapuluh into the nearby Tabir area after the rest of her herd was killed.

If successful, Karina would be the first female elephant brought to Harapan from Bukit Tigapuluh, a once-pristine rainforest that has become perilous for Sumatran elephants (Elephas maximus sumatranus), a critically endangered species. The rescuers also hoped to relocate a pair of male elephants.

Tabir isn’t safe for elephants, and Bukit Tigapuluh isn’t much better, according to translocation team leader Alexander Mossbrucker, a conservationist from the Frankfurt Zoological Institute who was involved in the rescue attempt.

Ideally, he said, an elephant population of 100 would need 2,000 square kilometers (770 square miles) of habitat to roam in. In Bukit Tigapuluh, less than a quarter of that remains for around 150 elephants.

The destruction of elephants’ forest homes is a scenario playing out across Sumatra.

From 1990 to 2010, old-growth rainforest on the island shrank by 40 percent, driven by the encroachment of industrial agricultural and roads; thousands of square kilometers continue to be lost each year.

Due to poaching, habitat loss and conflict between people and elephants that wander into their villages — an increasingly common phenomenon as the forest shrinks — just 2,400 Sumatran elephants are thought to remain in the wild, according to the WWF.

High levels of human-elephant conflict “will eventually lead to the elephant’s extinction, if nothing is done,” Mossbrucker told Mongabay.

For her part, Karina had managed to avoid humans, surviving by hiding in overgrown farmland during the day and feeding on crops at night. But while the elusiveness saved her life, it’s made it hard to find her for the team of conservationists from the International Elephant Project, a collaboration that has raised more than $30,000 for her relocation.

At one point, the team managed to sedate Karina and fit her with a GPS tracking device. The plan was to monitor her movements and mobilize for the rescue when Karina moved closer to the road.

Yet even with a team of elephants from Minas Elephant Training Center in nearby Riau province brought in to keep her calm, the team’s efforts at capture only drove her deeper into the forest and into trickier terrain. After several days, the team decided it would not be safe to tranquilize and transport her.

Instead, they turned their attention to the two male elephants, hoping that in the meantime, Karina might make herself more available. Eventually, they were able to capture one of the bulls, called Lucky Dudung.

Unfortunately, Lucky’s transition has not been as smooth as was hoped.

“Lucky has been on the move since he was released [at Harapan], covering large distances,” Mossbrucker says. “[H]e even left Harapan forest several times to roam into adjacent areas. Only the presence of field rangers could prevent any unwanted accidents.”

The situation parallels the challenge found in countries like Sri Lanka, where large-scale relocation efforts have been stymied by elephants returning “home” — causing new problems with humans along the way.

According to Mossbrucker, relocations are useful on a case-by-case basis, “by helping establish genetic diversity that is needed for healthy population growth.”

At Harapan, Karina would join a herd of six females and Haris, a young male who was brought from Bukit Tigapuluh three years ago.

“Before Haris was translocated, no bull was present in the area, and therefore there was no offspring at all. Now there is a chance for natural breeding to occur, and with the translocation of more animals, the risk of inbreeding depression could be reduced,” Mossbrucker said.

“Karina would improve the herd’s genetic diversity.”

On a larger scale, however, the answer to the plight of the elephant is to protect more habitat.

“The core problem in Sumatra is the limited availability of suitable elephant habitat, and the ongoing destruction and fragmentation of the few remaining areas that currently still provide habitat, is not tackled well enough,” Mossbrucker said.

With a second attempt to relocate Karina set for some time this winter, the relocation team is closely tracking her movements. They are as determined as ever to get her to safety.

“We know [Karina] was once part of a vibrant, matriarchal herd,” says the International Elephant Project.

“She’s now alone… Her entire herd has now been killed.

“We will not give up until she’s in safe and with other elephants.”

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Land owners have to explain elephant deaths

KOTA KINABALU: The State Government has invoked Section 33 of the State Wildlife Enactment which requires land owners to explain to the State wildlife director when an elephant is found dead on their property.

Deputy Chief Minister Christina Liew said a RM120,000 government reward for whistleblowers or eyewitnesses had not been able to stop the death and killing of elephants.

Due to the killing of a Borneo Pygmy Elephant mother which died of a head shot, and its baby, body missing and only innards were left at the scene, Liew added the ministry had no choice but to invoke the enactment.

“We will ask them to come and explain to the director, why is the elephant killed on your land? We want him to explain and this we have to turn to this last resort already. The senseless killings have been going on quite rampantly and we feel very sorry these elephants were killed unnecessarily.

“We do not know what is the motive but whatever it is, it has to be stopped. That is why we are invoking the act and this will take immediate effect from today,” she added after launching her ministry’s 50th anniversary celebration here.

Liew assured the state government would not go soft on owners of lands, whether located in the forest reserve or Yayasan Sabah concession areas, amongst others.

“Everybody. (It) applies across the board. Some people think that because the elephant was killed in the forest reserve or in the government’s land then we will be lenient. No, no more.

“We have been advising them. This human-elephant conflict has been going on long enough. We’ve done everything that we could. I found it getting bad now,” she explained, reiterating that the law would be enforced on all types of land owners, including smallholders and plantation owners.

Liew added in the future, a Special Animal Unit that would be handled by an American elephant expert.

On Wednesday, Sabah Wildlife director Augustine Tuuga revealed that 25 Borneo pygmy elephants were found dead this year, either shot or snared in traps in jungles and plantations in the state.

“This is the highest recorded so far,” Augustine said, referring to annual fatalities. Over 100 elephants have died in the last eight years in Sabah.

Conservation group WWF estimates that only around 1,500 elephants are left.

Baby-faced with oversized ears and long tails that drag on the ground, pygmy elephants are found on Borneo island which is shared by Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei.

Loss of habitat is the biggest threat for the pygmy elephants, with deforestation, logging and rapid expansion of palm oil plantations contributing to the decline in their population. The elephants also fall prey to poachers or traps set up to catch animals.

Authorities have been unable to determine the exact reasons for the higher number of deaths this year, but Augustine said they have noticed elephants spending more time outside of forests and in plantations.

The rich rainforests of Borneo are surrounded by vast palm oil plantations. Palm oil companies in Malaysia and Indonesia, the world’s top two producers of the vegetable oil, have been accused of doing little to protect wildlife and their habitat.

The latest reported death in Sabah was on Saturday, when wildlife officers found the slightly decomposed carcass of a female elephant in a plantation, with what they believe was a gunshot wound at its temple.

There have been at least two other deaths by shooting and many others caused by injuries from traps.

Bringing the killers to justice has proven to be difficult, due to the remoteness of the locations and the sheer lack of information and witnesses, Augustine said.

No witnesses have come forward despite a reward offer of RM120,000, he said.
WWF Malaysia called on palm oil companies to take more action.

Four male elephants died from snare injuries in the past two months and all of them were found in plantations bordering forest reserves, WWF said in a statement this week.

“Even more worrisome than the number of elephant deaths are the number of elephants that have died due to strategically placed snare traps within their habitat,” the conservation group said.

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The plight of the palm oil elephants

There are precious few elephants left in Borneo, and the population gets smaller every year.

Forests where they live are being slashed to make way for palm oil plantations, making it more and more difficult for elephants and farmers to thrive together in close quarters.

Photojournalist Aaron 'Bertie' Gekoski has been documenting the situation in southeast Asia.
A species in decline

It is thought that Borneo's elephants are a subspecies of the endangered Asian elephant (Elephus maximus), although scientists have yet to classify them as such.

According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Asian elephant populations have dwindled by 50% over the last three generations, as their habitats are shrinking and fragmenting.

Adult elephants can spend up to 19 hours a day feeding, and they roam for hundreds of kilometres through grassland, forests and scrubland. Their size means they need large areas of land to live comfortably - but their forest homes are being encroached upon by human homes, plantations and farms.

This pressure to find space has led to more and more conflicts between humans and elephants when elephants eat or trample crops. It's a particularly large problem in Indonesia and Malaysia, where huge areas of forests have been lost to palm oil plantations.

The plight of the elephants is perfectly captured in the image above, Palm-oil survivors, by environmental photojournalist Aaron Gekoski. It is in the current Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition.

Taken on a cleared palm oil plantation in Borneo, in the Malaysian state of Sabah, three generations of elephants are dwarfed by a scene of devastation around them.

With the light fading fast he quickly shot the four majestic mammals, reflecting on how they are 'dwarfed by a desolate and desecrated landscape'.




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Endangered Sumatran Elephants – Threats and Conservation

Indonesia is known as a country that has a large area of rain forest. Having over 18,000 islands, Indonesia contains the world’s third largest area of rain forest after Amazon and Africa’s Congo Basin. The forests of Borneo and Sumatra are islands that contain rain forest the most in Indonesia.

The forest of Sumatra is among the most biologically habitats on earth and high numbers of unique plants and animals may be found there. Sumatra is the Southeast Asian island that is located on the Equator and becomes a home to some of the world’s most diverse rain forest. This island is the world’s sixth largest island.

Habitat Loss

Then, due to its tropical climate, thousands of unique species live there. In recent years, massive habitat loss of these animals makes them to the very edge of survival. They are very rare to be seen in their natural habitat. Some of the endangered animals are Sumatran tigers, orangutans, Sumatran elephant, and Sumatran rhinos.

Therefore, through this article we will be focus on endangered Sumatran elephant, as one of Endangered Animals in Indonesia. We will discuss about its characteristic, behavior, and the conservation. We hope that you will understand this animal better after reading this article.

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