Nurfika Osman

Komodo dragons feed on a water buffalo carcass in Komodo National Park. (Photo: Adam Majendie, Bloomberg)

Ministry Intensifies Efforts for Komodo

Last week’s hotel bombings are forcing Indonesian authorities to work even harder in their bid to get Komodo National Park chosen as one of the Seven New Wonders of Nature, an official said on Thursday.

“A more intensive campaign is needed to restore our image after the attacks on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels,” said Esthy Reko Astuty, director of promotional publications at the Ministry of Tourism and Culture.

On July 21, the Switzerland-based New7Wonders Foundation announced that the national park made the final cut and will vie with 26 other natural landmarks worldwide to be named one of the Seven New Wonders.

The announcement came just days after bomb attacks at the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels killed seven people, in addition to the two suicide bombers, and injured more than 55.

Esthy said that because of the bombings, the country had been forced to double its campaign efforts to recover its image as a safe tourist destination.

“We will continue to carry out the campaign as planned, but we are going to collaborate with more institutions to make Komodo one of the Seven Wonders,” Esthy said, adding that the ministry has been collaborating with the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology in campaigning for the national park.

“We are also collaborating with the Ministry of Forestry to conserve the national park, community groups, musicians, artists and educational institutions for the campaign,” she said.

The ministry has called on its culture and tourism agencies across the country to promote the park.

“We are anticipating a decline in voters as well as visitors to the national park,” Esthy said.

She added that the ministry assumed that the 25 percent of Indonesians who had Internet access voted to allow the park to make the final 27.

According to the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, 30 million of the country’s 230 million people have access to the Internet.

The winners of the contest will be announced in 2011. A panel of experts streamlined the list from the initial 261 landmarks entered in the competition to 77. After an open vote online, the list was further pared down to 27.

“As an Indonesian, I have voted for the Komodo National Park since the first poll,” said Kartika Nanda, an 18-year-old college student. “Since Facebook is very popular nowadays, I am using it for campaigning, to make citizens in the country and my friends on Facebook vote for Komodo.”

A “Support Komodo National Park to be one of the new Seven Wonders of the Natural World” group on Facebook now has 140,851 members.

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