Majestic: The coast of Flores features tiny, scenic islands, including Komodo Island
Komodo dragons (Varanus komodoensis) and the local community in West Manggarai in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) are striving to survive amid the limitations and poverty plaguing the area.
Voted best tourist island of 2008 in Luxury Travel Magazine and a Unesco World Heritage Site since 1991, Komodo is known and loved.
One recent day, high waves, thick mist and heavy rain prevented a motorboat from sailing on to nearby Rinca Island.
'We've got to return to Labuan Bajo Port as the waves are over 4 meters high. A boat heading for Rinca with foreign tourists aboard broke up several years ago,' the skipper told passengers in a serious tone.
Rinca Island is included in the Komodo National Park zone and managed by the Forestry Ministry. Besides Komodo and Rinca, Padar and 44 smaller islands are also home to the giant lizards.
Apart from Komodo dragons, the national park is also home to 277 wildlife species, including 32 kinds of mammals, 128 species of birds and 37 reptilian species. In addition, the park houses 253 coral species and 1,000 fish species.
The biodiversity in the zone also earned Komodo National Park the most votes as one of the New 7 Wonders along with the Amazon rainforest, Halong Bay in Vietnam, Iguazu Falls in Argentina and Brazil, Jeju Island in South Korea, the Puerto Princesa subterranean river in the Philippines and Table Mountain in South Africa.
Danger lurks behind Komodo's natural wealth though. Komodo Island, located between the Banda Sea, the Flores Sea and the Indian Ocean, offers nutrient-rich waters for marine organisms but at the same time poses a threat to navigation with its strong ocean currents.
From 2010 to 2012, for instance, dozens of boat passengers were rescued when their vessels sank in
the waters off Komodo.
A group from the Wildlife Conservation Forum (Foksi) with the support of the Indonesian Safari Garden and the Indonesian Tourism Business Association embarked on an expedition of the island one evening to determine how to develop the tourist destination without ignoring wildlife conservation.
Yusuf Jenata Hamzah, 50, a member of staff at the park, said, 'Komodo lizards are fierce reptiles and sensitive to the smell of blood. It is recommended that women having their period avoid walking around the island.'
With his 20 years of experience, Yusuf also safeguards the island against hunters. 'The number of hunters has been decreasing. They're actually targeting deer,' he noted
'Komodo dragons are capable of adapting to the environment. They can lay eggs and hatch them under extreme weather conditions. The females are endowed with the ability to find warm and comfortable places to hatch their eggs,' he said.
However, as the largest lizard in the world, komodo dragons are on the red list of threatened species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the lizards remain in the spotlight amid the dangers from climate change and the global decline in reptilian and amphibian populations.
Some experts describe the difficulty of doing research on komodos to determine their numbers because of the difficulty to trap the reptiles. 'From my daily observations, the total number of komodo dragons on this island hasn't changed,' added Yusuf.
The park's head of administration, Heru Rudiharto, said his office annually monitored the komodo population and no significant changes had resulted from the effect of climate change. 'Every year the giant lizards reach the average number of 4,600. Their prehistoric ancestors lived 40 million years ago and have continued to adapt,' he said.
According to Heru, the komodo dragons on Rinca Island feed on deer and boar but those on Nusa Kode and Gili Motang eat smaller animals like rats.
'Even without deer and boar, the lizards on both islands still total about 100 though they are 2.5 meters long compared to their 3-meter Rinca cousins,' he added.
Several komodo activists in Indonesia have expressed fears of the reptiles' waning population on Komodo Island owing to limited food sources as locals also consume komodo prey, forest fires with their impact on food supply, and global warming.
One morning, dozens of fishermen's boats were ready to transport tourists to the island. 'Hundreds of tourists visit this world-renowned island daily, with a lot of money flowing into East Nusa Tenggara, but regrettably the local community doesn't yet enjoy proper welfare,' said Stefanus Rafael, 45, a youth
activist in West Manggarai.
Tourist arrivals at Komodo National Park in 2012 were 16,768, up by 4,000 from the previous year, which was attributed by the NTT Tourism and Culture Office to the island's position among the world's new seven wonders. Swisscontact data in 2010 recorded 92.79 percent foreign tourist arrivals at the national park.
Head of the promotion section of the same office, Bona Rumat, said the increasing number of tourists to Komodo Island caused the money supply in Labuan Bajo to amount to over Rp 838 billion (US$86.20 million). Nonetheless, Antonius Asri, a master's student at Gajah Mada University in Yogyakarta in his 2010 thesis found that 66 percent of the local community obtained no benefit from the park because, among other reasons, the zoning system of park management limited people's access to sources of livelihood.
The Central Statistics Agency revealed that of the population of 221,703, around 50 percent were impoverished. 'More than just material poverty, the community here is also poor in access to facilities. Besides clean water and garbage issues, locals also enjoy no proper health services because West Manggarai doesn't have a hospital,' said Father Marcelinus Agot SVD.
Marcelinus said that for medical treatment people had to go to Bali, which takes an hour by air. A Komodo park officer attacked by a komodo dragon a few months ago had to be rushed to Bali. He fortunately recovered, for the poison of a komodo bite can be deadly.
'It's for those who can afford to pay air fares, otherwise they would have to go by boat for a whole day,' said Marcelinus, adding that the regency also had minimum access to infrastructure, with poor road
conditions posing a challenge to the relief of poverty in NTT.
'As a tourist destination, many hotels have been built but most of the food supply needed is brought in from Bali. In fact, the greater part of the local community is composed of fishermen and farmers,' he said.
Chairman of The Komodo Flores Dive Guide Association (TKFDIGAS) in West Manggarai, Nurdin Rais, said many resorts had been set up around Komodo that offered dive packages, but it was a shame that 50 percent of the dive guides were foreigners, the rest from areas outside West Manggarai. 'The local people have become spectators only,' he lamented.
West Manggarai Tourism Office head Theodorus Suardi acknowledged that his agency did not yet understand how the dive guide system applied around the park zone had been operating and the services for tourists enjoying undersea activity. 'Our human resources are still at a low level of development,' he said.
' PHOTOS BY JP/INDRA HARSAPUTRA
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