Imam Ardhianto - Changing Human-Tiger Relations in Sumatra

Maybe it's useful for listeners to also just, you know, to know what is this world? What does this world look like? So you've been going to the jungles in Sumatra.

What is Sumatra like, especially the jungles and areas you've been studying? And what kind of tiger presence are we talking about here in those jungles? It's a

place where commodity boom and bust of different plantation is happening in Sumatra.

The first, of course, logging era during the new order and after the palm oil.

the mining in the eastern part and also now with the tanaman industry or industrial plantation forests in rio and other places and so the jungle when you talk about but in sumatra is now only a small portion of the area in compare to many plantations and extractive industry in in Sumatra but this I think explain a lot about what kind of place is Sumatra now and what is its relations with human tiger context because from my paper my argument is one of the factor explaining about human tiger relations is explaining about the context of Sumatra when plantation is cutting through cutting all the protected area either with roads or a plantation itself.

So you have forested area, but you also have a plantation area that's really patchy in different places.

So if you are imagining a pristine forest with really dense vegetation and everything, you will have it, of course, in a protected area.

But when you talk about biodiversity and also the importance of other effective conservation measures, they call it OECM now, you talk about how this protected area and the forest that... place for many different species that is important for ecology is being cut by the by the expansion of plantations both in large scale and also in a small scale by small holder either palm oil or other commodities So when you talk about Sumatra, it's mostly explaining about that, explaining about the tensions between protecting the forest and also the expansion of the plantation.

And when we're talking about protection of tigers and protection of humans in Sumatra, we're talking about different stakeholders, right? We have the NGOs, we have the farmers, we have local communities, but there's also the states here.

And I think one of the main players here is the BKSDR, which is the Indonesian Natural Resources and Conservation Agency.

How have they been doing their work in Sumatra when it comes to tigers?

So this

is

interesting because from the case in West Sumatra and also from the case in Aceh province, of course their role is to protect and also to engage community in order to maintain the quality of ecosystem in several designated area of places that is important for tiger.

For example, they are responsible for nature reserve area, wildlife sanctuary area, or in Indonesia, they are also involved in protected forest.

And they are responsible to maintain the ecosystem services of that area.

But they also, at the same time, responsible to protect the species within the area.

And there is a new law from 2024, the number 32, regulating the natural resource and conservation.

And there is a mandate for the BKSDR to protect the species itself.

So they're also in collaborations police and also with other officials that is responsible to anticipate the problem of illegal wildlife trade and also to anticipate the problem of human-tiger conflict as well.

And this is their role.

With the number of staff, this is interesting.

With the number of staff, there is a problem to take this role in different places because it's usually in a large area.

And that really depends also with NGO and also local community to support the protections of the area.

And their role now is also in relations in community is also together making decisions many, many initiative and collaborative effort to protect and also to anticipate problems in human tiger relation as well.