News

Text by Lely Puspita

Photo by Venanta Enggar

Awaited trip has finally came! we’ll start a trip to Tesso nilo National park in Riau province. This trip followed by me youth tiger ambassador, Lely Puspita and the winner of T-Ger! Design Competition, Venanta Enggar. We’re going to spend 3 days “playing” at tiger and elephant’s home, Tesso Nilo.

Day 1

We only need ninety minutes flight from Jakarta to Pekanbaru, but journey not finnished yet because we still had a nice bumpy trip from pekanbaru to Tesso nilo for almost 5 hours by car through palm oil plantation all over the road. But all of it payed off, once we arrived at WWF-Elephant Flying Squad Camp. How exciting when we were greeted by a very big elephant standing next to us.

We had a short explanation about WWF-Indonesia’s program in Riau from Mr. Syamsuardi, WWF-Indonesia’s flying squad officer. We can't describe how proud we are realizing that Riau have lots of natural potency. The forest and its wild animal, Sumatran tiger and sumatran elephant. Too bad, that today Riau face lots of big threat of its natural resource, such as land use conversion, illegal hunting and animal trade. Deforestation and habitat degradation, especially for oil palm plantations, has led to increased human-wildlife conflict.  This threat force elephant and tiger run into critically endangered species.

WWF-Indonesia iniciate Tesso Nilo Elephant Flying Squad to helps local communities by pushing wild elephants back into the forest and teachs how to mitigate human-animal conflict. And we had great opportunity to be ‘friends’ with elephant flying squad for the next three days.

First day meeting with Rahman (an elephant flying squad) make us excited with his friendly welcoming. Seems he invites us to play with, but his big body and long tusk quite scared us to come closer. And we would rather play with Imbo, a one year old calf, the smallest elephant in this camp. We still want to play a long with these group of elephant flying squad but they had to back to their home, forest. Remember, the best home for  animal is their wild habitat. That’s why we need to help them to save their home.

After short briefing for tomorrow activity, we absolutely can’t wait for it because we were going to bath the elephant and have bumpy ecotour to the forest with elephant flying squad. So, we  need to prepare our self to take a rest in our camp and be friends with other animal, big mosquitos. and well, everything is bigger here, the elephant and also the mosquitos.

Day 2

We had a tight schedule today. Our day began with surprise in the early morning when we just woke up and looked up an elephant grassing near our camp, just like a dream and that was a wonderful scenery. Today is a very special day, because we had chance for bathing the elephant in the river near flying squad camp. Seems like human, elephant flying squad need to took a bath twice a day to avoid agas, a kind of insects that always lurking over the elephants. We sit over elephant’s neck to bathing them. Do you know? Elephant use their thrunk as snorkle when swimming in water. That’s why we were succesfuly getting all wet when the elephant dive into the water, it’s feel like we were sitting in the sunken big boat.
 

After bathing elephant, we continued to ecotour with elephant patrol through Tesso nilo national park. Tesso Nilo Elephant Flying Squad’s job is to monitor illegal activities in the park and pushing wild elephants back into the forest. This program tried to reduce human-elephant conflict and convice the community that they can protect their farms without killing elephants. Beside reducing conflict, flying squad also open for special interest ecotourism. That’s how we try to spread awarnesse and give better understanding about sumatran elephant condition and its habitat.
 

Almost two hours roaming around forest with elephant patrol, gave us adrenalin rush when we had to cross the river and sink into mud. Such an unforgetable experience, riding a ‘giant’ called sumatran elephant which is threatened into critically endangered species.

Today’s activity after elephant patrol trip was cooking pudding for elephant. We cook pudding in a big drum and mix some ingredients on it, such as brown sugar, salt, corn, water and bran. Salts and minerals are needed for strong bones, teeth and tusks. Pudding is only supplement for elephant, their staple food is grass.

While waiting the pudding ready, we went to forest again for tree planting. This planting area is program of Forest Friend WWF-Indonesia to helps forest restoration strategy by planting trees in some degraded areas in tesso nilo national park. Forest Friend is a WWF-Indonesia and WWF-Germany joint program to generate online campaign and for each supporter gathered, ten trees will be planted. The restoration focused on Sumatran tiger’s critical habitats.

And finally, after planting trees we back to flying squad camp and there were some hungry elephants waiting for us to fed them the pudding. Feeding elephant was the most energical activity for today, we need to ‘fight’ with six hungry big elephants that scrambling to get feed.

Day 3

We went on field trips to see the WWF-Indonesia Tiger research Team monitoring tiger trail and put on camera traps. We had to cross a huge bush and peatland while monitoring animal trail. What an exciting experience! we found roots that we can drink the water from it and we also found bear claw in some trees. Unfortunately we couldn’t found any tiger trail because of rainy season, so the tiger trail may be erased by rain.

We tracked the ecological trail and learn how to put on camera traps, how it works, and how it helps tiger research team to know the Sumatran Tigers and other wild animal population, preys, home range, etc. Karmila Parakkasi, Survey and Monitoring Coordinator of WWF-Indonesia’s Tiger Research Team gave us short explanation about how she and her team puts and collects capture from camera trap. Since 2004 they had been collected more than 1700 memory card and use it to identify every individu of tiger. Each tiger has difference stripes on its body, researcher use this to monitor its population and home range.

After fieldtrip with tiger research team, we continued our fieldtrip with Tiger Patrol Unit (TPU). While tiger research team collecting the data about sumatran tiger,on the other side tiger patrol unit play their role in protecting sumatran tiger from poacher and tiger-human conflict. TPU always coordinate with tiger research team to follow up every data of sumatran tiger.

In the field, tiger patrol unit walk along possible paths taken by illegal poachers. They walk while identifying sorround condition to found traps. If traps are found they are cleaned up and confiscated to eliminate tiger killings. However, this is not the only effort to protect Sumatran tiger. When they found any tiger trails, they had to cleaned up the tiger trail so that poacher didn’t notice if there’s tiger in those area. We had discussion with Bang Abeng and Erizal, tiger patrol team and they showed us the simulation of tiger traps and realising that was a very cruel poaching. We can’t imagine how suffering the tiger when they catched by wire trap, so tragic.

A whole day fieldtrip, gave us lots of experience and get better understading about Sumatran tiger condition. It was so exciting to see the Sumatran Tiger habitat; they belong in the wild, as an important part of the ecosystem.

The last activity for our trip in Tesso nilo was visiting association of Sialang honey of forest in Pelalawan district. This product is one of green and fair products, it means the honey is produced from natural ingredients that are harvested wisely and sustainably. The cultivation management process undertaken with the aim to improve living standards of local communities along with the preservation of natural resources sustainable. This association iniciated by WWF-Indonesia  to encourage local communities.

It was such a great trip in Tesso Nilo, we gain lots new experiences, lots of fun, new friends from great team of elephant flying squad and tiger protection unit that's willing to work hard and tell the world to save our forest and natural resources.

We went on field trips to see the WWF-Indonesia Tiger research Team monitoring tiger trail and put on camera traps. We had to cross a huge bush and peatland while monitoring animal trail. What an exciting experience! we found roots that we can drink the water from it and we also found bear claw in some trees. Unfortunately we couldn’t found any tiger trail because of rainy season, so the tiger trail may be erased by rain.

We tracked the ecological trail and learn how to put on camera traps, how it works, and how it helps tiger research team to know the Sumatran Tigers and other wild animal population, preys, home range, etc. Karmila Parakkasi, Survey and Monitoring Coordinator of WWF-Indonesia’s Tiger Research Team gave us short explanation about how she and her team puts and collects capture from camera trap. Since 2004 they had been collected more than 1700 memory card and use it to identify every individu of tiger. Each tiger has difference stripes on its body, researcher use this to monitor its population and home range.

After fieldtrip with tiger research team, we continued our fieldtrip with Tiger Patrol Unit (TPU). While tiger research team collecting the data about sumatran tiger,on the other side tiger patrol unit play their role in protecting sumatran tiger from poacher and tiger-human conflict. TPU always coordinate with tiger research team to follow up every data of sumatran tiger.

In the field, tiger patrol unit walk along possible paths taken by illegal poachers. They walk while identifying sorround condition to found traps. If traps are found they are cleaned up and confiscated to eliminate tiger killings. However, this is not the only effort to protect Sumatran tiger. When they found any tiger trails, they had to cleaned up the tiger trail so that poacher didn’t notice if there’s tiger in those area. We had discussion with Bang Abeng and Erizal, tiger patrol team and they showed us the simulation of tiger traps and realising that was a very cruel poaching. We can’t imagine how suffering the tiger when they catched by wire trap, so tragic.

A whole day fieldtrip, gave us lots of experience and get better understading about Sumatran tiger condition. It was so exciting to see the Sumatran Tiger habitat; they belong in the wild, as an important part of the ecosystem.
The last activity for our trip in Tesso nilo was visiting association of Sialang honey of forest in Pelalawan district. This product is one of green and fair products, it means the honey is produced from natural ingredients that are harvested wisely and sustainably. The cultivation management process undertaken with the aim to improve living standards of local communities along with the preservation of natural resources sustainable. This association iniciated by WWF-Indonesia  to encourage local communities.

It was such a great trip in Tesso Nilo, we gain lots new experiences, lots of fun, new friends from great team of elephant flying squad and tiger protection unit that's willing to work hard and tell the world to save our forest and natural resources.