Friday May 16.2014
BY RICHARD FERNANDEZ JOW
A village boat with tourist arrives and follows the actions of the lodge boat to take the tourist into the jungle to see the elephants which causes the elephants stress and puts human life at risk.
KINABATANGAN: Tourism players (operators, guides, boatmen) including so-called “eco” operators continue to ignore warnings and advice from the Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD) and its partners by placing themselves and their tourists at great risk to see the Borneo Pygmy elephants in the wild.
“I am really, really disappointed and shocked with the report and the series of photos we received from the team of Honorary Wildlife Wardens from the HUTAN – Kinabatangan Orang-utan conservation Programme (KOCP)”,SWD director Datuk Dr. Laurentius Ambu said
The photographs taken this month, showed tourist boats from the lodges and the villages stopping by the banks of Tomanggong Besar River (tributary of the Kinabatangan River) and letting the tourist out to get a better glimpse of elephants which were in the jungle.
“This issue has been brought up time and time again, in the media and at various meetings and discussions. There is no excuse for getting out of the boats and risking everyone’s life including children as seen in the photographs. This kind of behavior is dangerous for the people and
stressful to the elephants”, Laurentius said.
In December of 2011, an elephant in Tabin Wildlife Reserve killed an Australian tourist after she left the trail to take pictures of the animal. In that tragic incident, it was understood that the tourist had
not heeded the advice of her guide to stay on the trail.
“Everyone in Sabah, particularly in the tourist industry, is well aware of that case and yet we have tour guides and boatmen taking the same type of risk to take photographs of elephants in the jungle in the Lower Kinabatangan. If one of the elephants was startled by the flashes or the people, they could panic and charge the tourists, which would be a disastrous situation,” cautioned Laurentius.
Nurzhafarina Othman, a Malaysian doctoral student registered at Cardiff University has been studying the wild elephants of the Kinabatangan since 2008. She shared her concerns on the amount of stress such encounters have on these unique elephants.
“It’s really frustrated to see and hear of such incidences again and again. We have spoken to the tour boats many times and explained that the stress resulting from a close human proximity to the elephants is unhealthy in the long term as it could alter the behavior of these elephants and jeopardize their natural movements. People need to respect and keep a distance of at least 30 meters from the elephants and they must never leave the boat during the river cruise. But yet they continue to get close with the elephants,” said Nurzhafarina who is also attached to the Danau Girang Field Centre and works closely with the SWD and HUTAN – KOCP on elephant behaviour.
She explained that the presence of boats close to the elephants prevented them from crossing the river and disrupted their migration paths. The elephants also face additional challenges in finding enough food in the Kinabatangan as most of the forest has been converted to oil palm plantations.
All these factors result in the elephants becoming more aggressive towards people and it is only a matter of time before there is a fatal accident caused by irresponsible behaviour of the tour operators.
“As human beings we have to learn to respect and behave better with the elephants. Tourism players must lead by example and stop enticing their tourists to go close to the animals. Having a photograph or a happy tourist is not worth the risk to both the elephants and human life,” Nurzhafarina said.
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