Project Profile: Bukit Tigapuluh

Environmental education for Bukit Tigapuluh

Background:

View of the Bukit Tigapuluh national park on Sumatra, Indonesia (Picture: ZGF)

The indonesian island Sumatra is one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. On this species-rich island the Bukit Tigapuluh national park is located. The national park and its surrounding forests form the island’s biggest lowland rain forest with a size of 450 000 hectares. The rate of endemic species in the park is very high. Endangered species like the Sumatran tiger, the Sumatran orangutan, forest Elephants and tapirs, that have disappeared in many other regions, still live in the Bukit Tigapuluh ecosystem. The lowland rain forest is of special importance for the Sumatran orangutan because of its fruit tree population that characterizes the only possible and natural habitat for this species. Due to deforestation for the production of palm oil and paper, illegal logging and poaching the amount of forest area has been minimized by 70% within 20 years. By the loss of their habitats the amount of wild animals living in the park also decreased dramatically. Only the national park still consists of untouched old-growth forest where the orangutans live. This area is surrounded and protected by buffer zones which allow sustainable use and provide habitats for tigers and elephants. Beyond this buffer zone most of the forest has been destroyed and the acreage has been turned into plantations. Due to the facts that the buffer zone is used by the local population and the animals’ living space is wide, there is a high potential for conflicts. And the number of these conflicts increases in consequence of decreasing the buffer zone.

The ZGF's commitment to the resettlement of orangutans in the national park:

Thanks to a reintroduction project organized by the Frankfurt Zoological Society, the orangutan population has been increased over the past years. Pups have also already been born here. However, reintroduced orangutans need special protection because the time they need for acclimatisation is quite long. Stressful situations by forest clearance or conflicts with the population living in the border zones, which partly result in the animal’s injury or even death, are more than hindering in this matter. But also other rare animal and plant species depend on protection by purchase and blocking of areas, rangers and monitoring. To make these measures successful in the long-term there was a need for improving the local population’s awareness concerning environmental protection and nature conservation.

The project:

Environmental education for pupils by the use of games and theatre (Picture: Antje Müllner)

The objective of the project „Environmental education for Bukit Tigapuluh” was to minimize the conflicts between people and wild animals in the national park’s Buffer zone and to de-stress and improve their co-existence. The local population’s well-being as well as the intact ecosystem with its specific occurrence of species should both be in the centre of attention. The local population needs to understand why nature should be conserved and that they are also responsible for being conducive to nature conservation. Their knowledge about law concerning protection and use of land should be improved as well as the understanding of ecological relations. Thus, an educational programme called “Mobile education unit” was developed. Young indigenous teachers visited the villages surrounding the national park with an educational programme catering to different age groups.

Children after an information programme about elephants (Picture: Farika Pandji)

The programme was especially meant for schol children who were informed about the forest and the endangered animal species by games, drawing competitions and puppet theatre. But also for grown-ups the “Mobile education unit” formed a communication platform for their problems with wild animals. Worries about direct danger, e.g. by tiger attacks and indirect danger, e.g. by elephant-caused crop failure, posed the biggest problems. In information sessions the teachers tried to clarify that the reasons for conflicts with wild animals and for the loss of their own space to live are the overexploitation and destruction of the forest. In this way the local people’s tolerance towards wild animals was significantly improved.