Sumatran Tiger

Most visitors to Indonesia hope to see the Sumatran tiger. However, this beautiful animal rarely shows itself. Unfortunately, human development has already pushed two other tiger species in Indonesia into extinction. The Javan tiger was declared extinct in 1994 and the Balinese tiger was last seen several decades before that. Fewer than five hundred Sumatran tigers are left in the wild, and the number is dropping steadily. If habitat destruction and poaching across Asia are not stopped, wild tigers have just a few years to survive. Tiger bones and body parts are sold on the black market for use in traditional Chinese medicines. This demand alone is putting tremendous pressure on these beautiful animals. Meanwhile, the forests where they live are being destroyed for timber, mining, and farming. Each animal needs up to twenty square miles to survive, and forests are a vanishing resource in many regions.

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Komodo Dragon

There are only about three to five thousand Komodo dragons alive in the wild, and they are limited to a few volcanic islands in Indonesia. The island of Komodo is now a nature reserve where the dragon is protected. The dragon is a large and deadly monitor lizard with close ancestors that date back more than 100 million years. It is the largest living lizard in the world (averaging ten feet long and two hundred pounds), but not the largest reptile (alligators and crocodiles can grow larger). The local villagers call the Komodo dragon ora, which means “land crocodile.” The dragons are normally a sandy brown with dark markings against very coarse and dry scales. They have a long neck and a tail that is longer than their body. They have strong, sharp claws that are used in combat with other dragons and during feeding frenzies.

It is highly advisable to keep them at a safe distance and to always look for them when touring their domain. More than a dozen human deaths have been attributed to dragon bites over the last century. A Swiss tourist sat down to relax while the rest of his tour group went onward and was attacked and eaten by a dragon. All that was left was a piece of his camera.

The discovery of the Komodo dragon is one of the zoological surprises of the twentieth century. Large lizards were assumed extinct until 1912, when a party of pearl fishermen went to Komodo Island and brought back stories of an enormous, prehistoric creature. An expedition followed from the Buitenzorg Zoological Museum on Java. A report about the dragons was published but received little attention in the years leading up to World War

In 1926, an expedition from the American Museum of Natural History traveled to Komodo to investigate the dragons. The expedition confirmed the stories and they returned with some specimens that they killed on their adventure.

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Asian Elephants

The Asian elephant is the largest land mammal on earth. In Indonesia, it roams the wilds of Sumatra and Kalimantan. The largest populations are concentrated in Way Kambas National Park and the Air Sugihan Reserve in South Sumatra. An adult Asian elephant consumes about three hundred pounds of food per day. They love the succulent leaves of young bamboo, ginger, and wild bananas. They also love oil palm, coconut, and other cultivated crops. A herd of these hungry creatures can wipe out young plantations quickly, which pits the elephants against their human neighbors in battles for survival. When elephants are pressed for space, they can come out of the jungle fighting mad, destroying crops, homes, and even killing farmers and their families. Many elephants also have been killed in this ongoing turf battle. To help minimize and manage these conflicts, the forestry department started an elephant education center at Way Kambas National Park. The center has trained hundreds of elephants to listen to human commands. Then the trained elephants are returned to the wild herds. When the herds come too close to a village or a plantation, villagers can issue commands to the trained animal to take the entire herd away from human conflict. Hundreds of villagers also have learned how to manage the wild animals in this manner. The education center has spawned similar training centers on Sumatra. As a result, elephant populations in parts of Sumatra are stabilizing. The fate of the elephant in Indonesia rests with its ability to coexist with its human neighbors, and programs such as the elephant education center can promote coexistence.

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Oranguten

The orangutan is another favorite attraction among wildlife enthusiasts. In Indonesian, its name means “man of the forest.” The orangutan is the only great ape found in Asia, and it is highly endangered because of habitat destruction and illegal poaching. Orangutans live in the wet and hot forests of Sumatra and Kalimantan (Borneo).

The orangutan is one of the most impressive and famous apes in the world and is the largest tree-dwelling animal on the planet and the second-largest great ape, behind the gorilla. A full grown male is as large as a man, but several times stronger. The mature male has large, fleshy cheek pads and a heavy throat pouch. It can weigh more than 250 pounds. The full-grown female is about half that weight.

Adult orangutans have an intelligence level similar to that of a five-year-old child. They move through the forest high in the canopy, swinging from tree to tree. Orangutans range over large areas in pursuit of food, including fruit, bark, leaves, flowers, and insects. They live a nomadic lifestyle that depends on food availability. The males frequently come down to the ground to travel longer distances, while the females rarely leave the trees. They have a solitary lifestyle, unlike other species of monkeys or apes. However, mothers will intentionally bring their young together to play. They make new beds high in the trees every day because they refuse to use the same bed more than once. Females are not sexually active until they are about fifteen years old. They usually reproduce about once every seven years, because the mothers care for their babies for about five years. Therefore, females rarely give birth more than three times in their life. Orangutans also are the victims of an illegal pet trade. Illegal poachers take the baby orangutans after killing their mothers and sell the babies as pets in places such as Taipei. Indonesian law has protected orangutans since 1925, but enforcing the law and confiscating orangutans from people is a complicated process. In the past, when a government official found someone possessing an orangutan, the animal either had to be released immediately or put to sleep. Since the government rarely had the facilities or the training to properly prepare the animals for release into the wild, and since no one wanted to destroy the animals, few orangutans were confiscated. Thanks to the development of orangutan rehabilitation centers, such as Camp Leakey and Wanariset Station, captured orangutans now have a better chance to return to the wild. Unfortunately, reintroduction is very challenging and does not always work.

Habitat destruction is the greatest threat to the survival of the orangutan, and it depends on the rainforest to survive. More than half of the world’s tropical rainforests have been destroyed in the last thirty years, and some estimate that 80 percent of the orangutan’s habitat has been destroyed in just the last twenty years. Illegal logging, slash-and-burn agriculture, gold mining, and forest fires threaten their survival. Only about 5 percent of the surviving orangutans live in protected areas, such as nature reserves and national parks, which means this species might be gone from the wild in ten years.

The current number of wild orangutans is estimated at fewer than twenty thousand animals. There were twice as many just ten years ago.

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Balinese Painting

Indonesia is home to 17 percent of the world’s known bird species. There also are more endangered bird species here than anywhere else on earth. Sumatra and Kalimantan alone have some 450 species of birds. There are more than three hundred bird species on Bali and Java. In Maluku, signs start to appear of the influence of Australian birds, most noticeably the parrots and cockatoos. There are more than forty parrot species and more than twenty species of the bird of paradise. Only a few of the latter have the gorgeous plumage, which makes them prized for decoration by the natives of Papua and for export. Relatives of the birds of paradise are the bowerbirds, which build intricate woven nests to attract a mate.

The male bowerbird builds a cone-shaped nest more than three feet tall. It also builds a door and a front terrace that are then decorated with flowers and fruit. The hornbill is a cornerstone of the arts and culture of the Dayak tribes of Kalimantan. The rhinoceros hornbill in particular is the dominant image of the area.

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