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Acquired taste offers job opportunities for East Java residents
Jerky, anyone?: A man packs geckos into boxes
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Jerky, anyone?: A man packs geckos into boxes. A large gecko can sell for up to Rp 1 million.
The business of exporting geckos to several countries in Asia could open job opportunities for hundreds of communities in Probolinggo, East Java.
However, this trade also has numerous drawbacks, such as leading to a risen insect-bourne diseases, following declining populations of geckos — the insects’ predators — in the wild.
Seventeen months ago, after graduating from Senior High School (SMA), Budiono, 18, a Tegalsiwalan villager in Probolinggo Regency, went to work for gecko trader Abdurrahman, who lives not far from his home.
“I feel lucky because many of my friends still haven’t got work yet. The wages that I receive from catching and packaging dried geckos will help me afford to get married,” he told The Jakarta Post a few weeks ago.
Abdurrahman pays Budiono an average of Rp 450,000 (US$45) per month. His wages increase if he catches a large number of geckos. One gecko is usually priced around Rp 1,500.
“Catching geckos must be carefully done otherwise my hand gets bitten and wounded. In addition, the geckos can’t be squeezed too tightly because their tails will drop off,” Budiono said.
Budiono said that if the geckos were squeezed too tightly the creatures could lose weight and
that decreased the gecko’s selling price. Gecko hunters often insert objects into geckos to increase their weight, in the hope they can raise the gecko price from Rp 1,500 each to Rp 4,000.
But buyers are usually wise to that trick. In addition to checking the weight, the buyers also check the gecko’s tail, which indicates age.
At Abdurrahman’s place, Budiono has 13 coworkers who on average are 30 years old. In addition to the workers drying geckos, Abdurrahman also has more than 20 casual staff whose special duty is to hunt geckos in the forest.
“In one day I received 1,600 live geckos from all the gecko hunters. If the amount exceeds the average catch the geckos will be placed in a large cage. However, within five days the geckos in the cage must be killed before they die of stress,” Abdurrahman told the Post.
In that village it’s not just Abdurrahman who has a job as a buyer. There are reportedly more than 20 other buyers who receive geckos that the hunters catch. Abdurrahman’s village has been dubbed “the gecko village” because so many are employed in the trade.
The business of catching geckos in Tegalsiwalan village and Leces subdistrict in Probolinggo regency has been going on since 1970. At first, the level of gecko hunting in the wild was insignificant because they were only used as an alternative treatment for itchiness, for the Jakarta market.
However, after many requests from various countries such as Singapore, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Japan and Korea, for the past three years geckos have been caught in large numbers.
In response to the rising demand, Abdurrahman decided to open his own business as a trader. He previously worked as an employee for one of the big buyers.
At that time gecko buyers sold dry geckos to exporters for Rp 4,000 per kilogram. Then exporters started to send the geckos to buyers overseas at a price of Rp 40,000 per kilogram.
Before the creatures are sent to the exporters the gecko buyers must pack them like beef jerky, as dried geckos. After the entrails of the gecko are removed, the geckos are split and tied with bamboo stems so they look like puppets.
After that the geckos are dried in the sun for one day and then put in an oven for several hours until they are completely dry. This is to ensure that the meat doesn’t go rotten.
During this process the traders must ensure that the geckos remain intact. If the head to tail part gets damaged this could affect the sale price to the exporters.
Didik Prabudi, 44, a dried gecko entrepreneur from Probolinggo, said geckos exported to China would be used by one of the importers from China who claimed the geckos would be employed for medicinal purposes.
“I do not know what products will be made from those geckos. However, according to various sources in China, geckos are used for medicines. Now other countries in Asia, like Japan are also becoming interested in importing geckos from Indonesia.”
In addition to their benefits as a skin disease medication to prevent itching, gecko meat reportedly has anti-carcinogenic qualities.
Wang from Henan University in China, in the World Journal of Gastroenterology (July 2008), said gecko meat could increase the body’s immune system, induce apoptosis from tumor cells and suppress the protein expression of cancer development.
Didik said live geckos were sold on the domestic market to be used in drugs, especially skin medicines, at the price of Rp 2,000 to Rp 2,500 per animal.
“At the moment many business people are choosing to export geckos overseas because the trade is more profitable. This year we were just able to export 100,000 dried geckos. Whereas the demand for geckos from the drug industry within the country amounts to 1 million animals a year.”
Didik said the producers of medicines have so far been covering the supply shortfall of geckos from Indonesia with geckos imported from Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
The Forest Ecosystem Controller of Conservation Section of Region Four in Probolinggo, Mohammad Syamsuddin, said geckos were classified as unprotected wildlife and catching geckos for commercial purpose was legal.
“The government is only limiting the number of geckos being caught so that the natural population will not decline; this is being done through a quota system administered by the Directorate of Biodiversity Conservation in the Ministry of Forestry,” he said.
Mohammad said that this year the quota of geckos caught in the wild nationally totalled 50,000 animals. The largest quota was in West Nusa Tenggara with 10,000 animals. East Java, Central Java and West Java each had a quota of 6,000 animals. The rest were divided among several other regions.
The chairman of ProFauna Indonesia, Rozek Nursaid said that local governments should provide tight controls over the capture of geckos in the wild so the trade did not threaten the population of geckos.
“The government should learn from the extinction of the Java Sparrow, which was preceded by massive captures in 1980. The government must also conduct research and gather data about the population of geckos in Indonesia,” he said.
A researcher into tropical diseases and bird flu from Airlangga University, Surabaya.
Chairul Anwar Nidom, said that massive capture of wild geckos had the potential to create new diseases because of the reduction of the gecko population.
“Currently we are carrying out observations of geckos. The early results indicate that when geckos as predators are reduced, so the number of insects will increase to such large numbers that they become uncontrollable again,” he said.
Along with Rozek, Nidom also believed that the government should control the hunting of geckos in the wild, which is currently underway on a large scale.
— Photos by Indra Harsaputra
