June 6, 2024
JAKARTA – The Environment and Forestry Ministry is planning to investigate the reported deaths of 26 critically endangered Javan rhinoceroses as a result of poaching at Ujung Kulon National Park in Banten to verify the actual number of fatalities.
In late May, Banten Police arrested 13 individuals for their alleged involvement in rhino poaching within the national park area. The suspects later testified to the police that they had killed up to 26 Javan rhinos to take their horns and sell them on the international black market.
Aside from arresting the suspects, the police also confiscated rhino horn intended to be sold to China. Javan rhinos are often targeted by poachers for their horns, which is commonly seen as a highly prized cosmetic or traditional medicine.
A team under the national park management is working together with Banten Police investigators to map out the location where the suspects hunted and buried the rhinos’ bones based on their statements.
“We still need to investigate it further and confirm the actual number by looking for the remains of the hunted rhinos,” said Satyawan Pudyatmoko, the ministry’s natural resources and ecosystem conservation director general, on Tuesday, as quoted by tempo.co.
Read also: Rare Javan rhino calf spotted in Ujung Kulon
The Javan rhinoceros is an endemic Indonesian animal that only lives in Ujung Kulon National Park. There are only around 80 individuals left in the park, with the herds that lived across northeast India and the rest of Southeast Asia having long gone extinct, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
As of May of last year, the Ujung Kulon management had recorded at least 80 rhinos by monitoring through camera traps and CCTVs across the park.
The Javan rhino and its Sumatran relative, which is also categorized as critically endangered, are legally protected under Indonesian law, as they are included on the list of protected species in a 2018 Environment and Forestry Ministry regulation.
The claim of 26 dead Javan rhinos should be a wake-up call with regard to the animal’s conservation efforts, said Muhammad Ali Imron, WWF Indonesia’s forest and wildlife program director.
“Authorities should treat this incident as an emergency; meaning that the conservation of the Javan rhino should become a priority rather than business as usual,” Ali said on Wednesday.
Among efforts that needed to be made, he added, was improving patrolling and monitoring by forest rangers using all available technology. Authorities should also boost the campaign against the hunting and poaching of endangered species.
The environment ministry had improved the surveillance and security across the national park to prevent hunters and poachers from killing more Javan rhinos in Ujung Kulon. Among the efforts was to restrict people, including local residents, from entering the Ujung Kulon peninsula for any reason, including tourism.
The peninsula area is among the last remaining habitats of the Javan rhino.
Authorities also intensified patrols across the national park through land and sea, as well as using flying drones equipped with thermal cameras to detect unauthorized people in the national park area.
Read also: Javan rhinos under threat from natural disasters, inbreeding
But poaching is only the tip of the iceberg, as the remaining Javan rhinos are also facing other threats such as disease possibly transmitted via wild animals in the park, as well as habitat degradation from encroachment within Ujung Kulon.
“Their habitat is also threatened by disasters because Ujung Kulon is located within a quake- and tsunami-prone area and near Mount Krakatau,” Satyawan said.
A Krakatau eruption in late 2018 triggered a tsunami that swept through parts of Ujung Kulon, killing at least two park officials and destroying the park management’s offices and boats. While Ujung Kulon management recorded no deaths among the rhinos, observers, including Ali of WWF Indonesia, described the disaster as an urgent indication of the need to create a second habitat for the rhinos to keep them further from all harm.
The intensified patrols have started to bear fruit as joint security forces arrested individuals identified as rhino poachers.
Aside from the 13 individuals, authorities arrested a local poacher last year, who later testified in court to being part of a poaching ring that had killed at least seven Javan rhinos and sold their horns since 2019.