INDONESIA
Customary Wildlife Trade in East Kalimantan
Conservation and the economic dimension
Wildlife trade has been a favourite target of conservation awareness activities. Since the 1980s, campaigns have intensified and switched from being almost exclusively Euro- and US-based concerns to becoming part of budding conservation movements in developing countries. However, the prevailing, if not unique, emphasis on the protection of nature has painted wildlife trade as a cruel activity sacrificing animals to the economic benefit of human predators.
By CRISTINA EGHENTER
What was missing from this picture were the social, economic, and historical circumstances of wildlife trade, particularly on an island like Borneo. In the area of the Kayan Mentarang National Park, for example, one of the largest rain forest protected areas of Southeast Asia in the Indonesian province of Kalimantan, wildlife trade has been going on for at least two hundred years. It brought people of the interior in contact with coastal towns and other regions throughout Southeast Asian and into China. It allowed them to purchase commodities and essential goods.In the past, the collection of wildlife products like bezoar stones (gallstones that can be found in individuals of langur Hose's Leaf monkeys Presbytis hosei) was largely in the hands of Punan people, who in turn traded the stones with Kenyah and Kayan villages headmen in exchange for rice and other goods. In most cases, there is no evidence to indicate that the hunting of langur monkeys, hornbills (Buceros rhinoceros and Buceros vigil) and other species linked with wildlife trade had a negative impact on the populations of those species. As the number of people involved in collecting activities was probably limited and the pressure exerted discontinuous, hunting proved a sustainable activity. The only exception being the rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis), which was most likely hunted to extinction in the late 1950s, at least in the area of the Kayan Mentarang National Park.
Bezoar stones
The trade consisted of animal parts that were both powerful symbols and ceremonial objects culturally shared by various groups of Dayak people throughout the interior of Borneo. These objects included: hornbill feathers used in traditional dances, cloud leopard teeth and skin, pheasant feathers, and deer antlers that were either displayed directly or manufactured into fine crafts. Other animal parts like rhino horns and bezoar stones were linked to Chinese medicinal trade with networks reaching both the eastern and western sides of the island.
Nowadays, the trade in some wildlife products like bezoar stones is thriving, stimulated by high market prices. Hunting methods have also changed. The availability of firearms used instead of blowpipes as hunting tools has made it easier for collectors, including outsiders, to experiment with a kind of hunting practice still unfamiliar to them. Since the early 1990s, the number of people hunting langur monkeys has increased. The market price of bezoar stones is the highest unit price among all wildlife products selling, at village level, for as much as $20-25/g in Indonesia. In a survey of 43 forest expeditions in the Apo Kayan area of the interior, in 1996, more than 50% of the informants recalled that the purpose of the expedition was to look for gaharu trees and hunt langur monkeys whenever guns were available. Some hunters are also setting up nets for trapping porcupines (Hystrix brachyura) which may also carry bezoar stones. The latter can fetch even higher prices (25-30$/g) but the trapping requires special knowledge of the preferred habitat of the porcupine.
Local hunters claim they cull sick and old monkeys (the last ones in the troop to descend to the salt spring to drink), which are believed to be more likely to have significantly developed bezoar stones. Although local hunters and collectors can be selective on the basis of experience and knowledge of the local ecology, outsiders can kill indiscriminately as they have no vested interest in preserving natural resources for later or for future generations. In some cases, there have been occasional reports of groups of collectors who poisoned the salt springs and thus killed hundreds of langur Hose's Leaf monkeys.
Cage-birds
Unsustainable practices of this kind are severely condemned by customary law which still regulates the management and exploitation of natural resources among the communities of the Kayan Mentarang National Park area. In some communities, local leaders have decided to prohibit the use of chemicals for hunting or fishing and have recently put a temporary ban on the trapping of certain species that were once abundant and are now disappearing from the vicinity of their villages.
Newly exploited forms of wildlife are now appearing on the most recent list of items traded out to the lowlands. Songbirds like straw-headed bulbuls (Pycnonotus zeylanicus) and white-capped shamas (Copsychus stricklandi) are sold as cage-birds in towns of the coast. Locals can get as much as $40 for an adult bird which can already sing; the same bird can then be sold for up to $90 in the towns of the coast. The trade in songbirds started only a few years ago. Avid collectors include army officers on duty at the small outposts near the international boundary between Malaysia and Indonesia. Other wildlife products used as decorations are sometimes traded across the border to Malaysia where they can fetch higher prices. These products represent occasional catches more than the output of special hunting expeditions.
Practices of trapping and killing wildlife for the purpose of trading must be put in the right economic context. Sales provide quick and high profits for the inhabitants of the interior, where alternative economic options remain extremely limited. Ironically, it is old and new customary regulations of local communities that can also guarantee the sustainable management of wildlife resources, as opposed to the stricter, and often unenforced, conservation laws of the government. *
Dr Cristina Eghenter, WWF Indonesia, Kayan Mentarang Project and University of Hull, can be reached at c.eghenter@pol-as.hull.ac.uk and awing@smd. mega.net.id