Govt to Relocate Komodo Dragons to Bali

VIVAnews - The government is planning to relocate five pairs of komodo dragons from their natural habitat in Wae Wuul, West Manggarai, East Nusa Tenggara to the Safari Park in Bali. The reason is genetics purification.

Then, an inevitable polemic surfaced. Some assume the genetics purification reason is only a cover up. They question why the komodo dragons will be moved to Bali. It is suspected that there is a business motive involved because Bali is an international tourist destination, especially because the government chose the Safari Park as the place of relocation.

Bali Safari and Marine Park (BSMP) expected the relocation will not be a continuous polemic because all of the decisions were made by the Indonesia Safari Park (TSI) in Bogor while Bali is just providing the place.

“If asked why the komodo dragons would be relocated, it’s the policy of the TSI. Even though the Forestry Minister has issued the Decree, until now there hasn’t been any team formed to pick up the komodo dragons,“ General Manager of BSMP, Hans Manansang said on Sunday, August 2.

According to him, BSMP is one of the forms of off-site conservation which could complete the on-site conservation. At off-site conservations, the population can be supervised and there are available facilities and supporting equipments.

“The conserved animals belong to the people and they would later be returned to them,” Manansang said.

Why should the comodo dragons be relocated? He explained that the conservation was done to anticipate the threat of extinction caused by habitat damages such as fire, global climate change, foreign species invasion, the escalation of disease infection, and human intervention like illegal logging, land clearing for housing area building, and animal hunting.

”Indonesia is not ready for those matters,” Manansang said.

Genetic purification is also important to prevent disabilities caused by animals that mate with their siblings.

The positive impact that off-site conservations could bring, Manansang said, is that every individual could be automatically returned to their natural habitat periodically to support the preservation on-site. Recent survey found an indication population number decrease on the north and west beach of Flores.

“This could be caused by the small amount of food resources such as the deers. The life of komodo dragons in their habitat really depend on the preys. If there is no food left, they could end up eating each other,“ he said.

Some of the animals from TSI which have been successfully returned to the nature are the Sumatran animals and Bali’s curik birds. In 2005, there were only five curik birds left. But, collaboration with the West Bali National Parl (TNBB) has managed to return 90 birds to the nature in 2007 and 2009.

5 Mahasiswa Muslim di India Terluka Akibat Ditimpuk Batu saat Salat

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Translated by: Nataya Ermanti

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VIVA.co.id
19 Maret 2024