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Taman Safari Indonesia makes great strides in Komodo conservation

Cute: A baby komodo dragon

PJ Leo (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Tue, May 16, 2017

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Taman Safari Indonesia makes great strides in Komodo conservation

Cute: A baby komodo dragon.(JP/PJ Leo)

Decades of hard work has finally paid off for the Taman Safari Indonesia conservation park in Bogor, West Java, with the recent birth of 21 Komodo lizards.

The park, which is located in a cool mountainous area south of Jakarta, saw in early March the hatching of 26 Komodo eggs, the results of mating between a male Komodo lizard named Rangga and a female, Rinca.

Both Rangga and Rinca arrived at the park in 1998 from their national habitat, the Komodo National Park in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT).

In mid-March, 21 of the hatched eggs produced healthy baby Komodo lizards, while four shrunk because of liquid deficiency and the remaining one disintegrated.

The successful captive breeding of 21 Komodo hatchlings was a significant achievement for the park after struggling with the program for around 30 years.

“We are very delighted and proud of the birth of 21 young Komodo lizards from Rangga and Rinca. We have been trying the same breeding process with other Komodo pairs but none have produced eggs since the opening of this park,” said Taman Safari Indonesia director Jansen Manansang.

“This successful conservation will initiate further efforts, and at least, we have made significant progress in our endeavor to save Komodo dragons, the unique reptile species of Indonesia, from their present vulnerable condition,” Jansen added.

The achievement cannot be separated from Jansen’s own ambition on his return several years ago from the Czech Republic.

In 2004, the Prague Zoo received a pair of Komodo dragons from Taman Safari Indonesia as part of a wildlife exchange program with the archipelago. The pair then laid three eggs and seven more in 2007 and 2009, respectively. All of those eggs successfully hatched.

The Czech Republic awarded Jansen and then Indonesian ambassador to the country, Leonard Tobing, for their contribution and services, which made the Prague Zoo the only zoological garden in Europe that managed to produce Komodo reptiles in captivity.

After the experience in the Czech Republic, a country with four seasons, Jansen believed the same captive breeding method could also be conducted at Taman Safari Indonesia.

This led to the establishment of Taman Safari Indonesia’s Komodo breeding special team, which comprises the park curator, a veterinarian, a nutritionist and a reptile keeper under his leadership.

Before commencing the ambitious program, the team went to the Prague Zoo for an eight-day study of everything related to egg laying and the hatching processes of Komodo dragons in the European climate.

The team then formulated the results of its observations and analysis into a working concept and solid plan of action.

In Indonesia, the team began its work by demolishing the park’s old Komodo dragon cage, which was open-air, and replaced it with a new one measuring 20 meters in length, 18 meters in width and 12 meters in height.

The new cage is a glass house equipped with modern facilities and sophisticated systems to could recreate the environment and climate of the Komodo’s original habitat.

It requires 28,000 watts of energy to raise the room temperature from 18 degrees Celsius to 40 degrees, and lower the humidity of the space from 99 percent to 60 percent. These settings are crucial to improve the metabolism of Komodos living in the glass cage.

The Komodo breeding team’s hard work eventually brought positive results. In April 2016, the team conducted an ultrasonographic examination and spotted the growth of egg follicles in Rinca’s ovaries. The team then brought Rinca and Rangga together in June 2016, and in July, they began mating.

The pair’s successful breeding, which consumed a lot of time and energy, was not only a gift to Taman Safari Indonesia but also a special prize to Indonesia, as Rinca laid her 26 eggs exactly on the country’s 71st Independence Day on Aug. 17, 2016.

The team placed the eggs in an incubator with a stable temperature and humidity level for six and a half months. In their natural habitat, the hatching period of Komodo dragons is eight months.

When the baby Komodos finally came out of their egg shells, the special team separated the young ones from each other because these lizards are naturally cannibalistic for survival.

The hatchlings now spend their morning hours sunbathing and eat young rats and lamb twice a week, after their previous diet of eggs. The Taman Safari Indonesia team also record their body weight and length on a
weekly basis.

Previous Komodo captive breeding programs were conducted at the Ragunan Zoo in South Jakarta, the Gembiraloka Zoo in Yogjakarta and the Surabaya Zoo in Surabaya, East Java, but they managed to produce very few eggs.

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