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Pekanbaru. For the past two weeks, residents of Petani village in Bengkalis district have been woken up in the early hours of the morning to the sounds of an elephant herd invasion.

Riantomo, the head of the village, said residents had been forced to evacuate out of fear, moving into the homes of their relatives.

“We don’t know what we have to do. We are prohibited from disturbing elephants because they are protected. But in the meantime we are always disturbed,” Riantomo said.

He said the daily invasion usually occurred at about 2 a.m., with elephants roaming around the homes. Some of the residents have tried shooing them away using torches and wood, but the herd of elephants seems reluctant to leave.

“We have shooed the elephants away repeatedly, but they still come back here. As the village head I do not know what I have to do. I can only make appeals. We cannot kill them because, if we do, we will get into trouble with the law,” he said.

The head of Riau’s Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BBKSDA), Trisnu Danisworo, said that as a temporary solution a team had been assigned to the village to keep elephants away from homes and plantations and to prevent conflicts between elephants and humans.

“The elephant conflict in Petani village is an old problem. It is because that area is a track for elephants. For now, we can just shoo them out of residential areas,” he said.

A longer-term solution for Petani village’s dilemma, he said, was to ensure that residential and plantation developments in the future do not encroach on the elephants’ habitat.

“The conversion of land into plantations in that area must be stopped,” he said.

The forests on Riau are dis­appearing, and this has seen the province’s elephant population plunge from more than 1,500 in the 1980s to 350 today.

Darori, the Ministry of Forestry’s director general of forest protection and nature conservation, said the elephant attacks occurred because more and more people were cutting down trees.

“The movements of the elephants are actually very ordered. They will always walk along the same paths and eat at the same places over and over again. They will even litter at the same spots,” Darori said, adding that the local administration had failed to discipline companies or officials who cut down trees on land that is known to be vital for the elephants’ survival.

Local environment activists said no concrete actions had been taken so far to prevent conflicts between humans and elephants in Bengkalis.

“The problem has so far been only talked about while no concrete actions have been taken by the government or agencies concerned,” said Simamora, chief of the Care for Nature and Environment Community Movement.

He said that with no solutions it was likely the locals would fight the elephants in their own way, and then fatalities could happen on either side. Many people have already been killed in clashes with the animals.



Additional reporting from Antara