Arresting Tiger Poachers

By Ujang Suryadi

Intelligence and Law Enforcement Unit, Rhino Protection Unit Program Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park, Sumatra, Indonesia

We know that rhinos are a key species and protecting rhinos and their habitat is our main task.  That means we also protect tigers,

Poaching suspects arrested

elephants, and other species. Patrolling and monitoring is our main job, but developing and maintaining relationships with the community and local people surrounding the national park is also another key to success in our program. They will help keep us informed about illegal activity in BBS NP and poaching activity as well.  We always try to maintain a good relationship with them because they supply most of our information. 

Recently, on 22 October 2010, according to information from our local informant, there was a tiger poached in BBS NP by a poaching gang.  Based on our investigation, we were able to identify the suspects and learned their location. Collaborating with the National Park and police, we developed a plan for how to arrest the suspects. The plan was that we would pretend we wanted to buy the tiger skin. One of the RPU members would be an undercover buyer, and the others would handle the arrest when the suspect showed our buyer the tiger skin.

Four hours before the transaction, the suspect and their group cancelled the meeting and they wanted to us to make a new me

Tiger skin confiscated from poaching gang in BBS NP

eting. We agreed and made a new meeting at a new location. The next day at 1:00 AM, we were waiting at the location like they instructed.  We made a deal among all our team members that we would start to arrest the suspects after they showed the tiger skin.  All of us were in position before the suspect came.  I saw the suspect coming with his group of about 4 people. The location where the meeting was taking place was near a big village and there were a lot of people living there. We knew we needed to make this operation smooth and quick. We didn’t want to disturb the local people so early morning in the morning.

After the suspect showed us the tiger skin, all teams (RPU, forest guards and police) arrested the suspect and the group.  There was a lot of fighting between our team and the suspects, and they tried to run away, but we successful in catching all of them. We collected all the evidence such as the tiger skin and teeth, and elephant tusk, as well. We also collected 3 guns, 7 bullets, and a knife. It looked like they were professional poachers and had been successful in killing many animals, for a long time. After we finished collecting all the evidence, taking photographs, and inputting all the data that we needed, we moved from that location to the police department.  We could not take a rest at the police office because we had to make a report and list all the evidence step-by-step.  It was very tiring, we stayed for 2 days at the police office and after finishing all the steps, we were able to go back to the RPU camp. Hopefully in the future there will be no more poachers at the BBS NP and all animals can live without the threat of being poached.

A Day in the Life of an RPU Member

By Romiyanto, Rhino Protection Unit, Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park, Sumatra, Indonesia

Translated by Sectionov

Today our duty is to survey and monitor rhino habitat in Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park (BBSNP). As usual, after packing and checking all our stuff and logistics, the others and I start to go to the field.  Our destination at this time is West Lampung.  One of our RPU vehicles dropped us off at the location near a forest that we will enter.  Full of energy, we started walking, monitoring, and collecting all the data that we needed.  

The first two days of patrolling and monitoring went smoothly; we wondered when something would become a problem for us.  As usual, every night we move from one place to another place.  On our third day, we stayed in Mendati (one location in deep forest in the West Lampung area) — we could tell it was going to rain. Everywhere we looked, it was dark and windy. We continued to walk because we hadn’t reached our destination. I still remember that around 5 PM, it was almost dark, but we needed to continue to walk to find our camp.  Suddenly, the rain came, but we had no time to stop because we were in open area and it was now dark.     

I felt cold, wet, and very tired and I think others also felt the same as I did.  I thought about stopping but we couldn’t, because there weren’t any good locations to make a camp.  We tried continuing our walk and kept our thinking positive. 

After one hour of walking, we finally reached the location that we usual make a camp at, but realized a big tree had fallen down in front of the camp.  We made another camp close to the area, and then noticed a group of wild elephants 5 meters away.  Suddenly, the elephants came after us and we all started running away, as far as we could. We even pushed through a huge bees’ nest getting away – and got lots of stings. We didn’t care; all that was on our minds was to get far away from that location. I heard how angry the elephants were.  

After making sure that we were far away from the location, we tried to calm down and step-by-step to make a simple camp to at least have somewhere to sleep that would cover us from the rain.  We didn’t have a chance to cook dinner, we were too tired.  Before sleeping we discussed what happened that day and tried to laugh, feeling hungry.  

Around 2 AM, we heard the sound of elephants near our camp again.  We didn’t know what we should do, so we prayed and tried to get ready to run, just in case the elephants came after us again.  No one went back to sleep; we were too concerned about paying attention to the sound of the elephants. Thank God, nothing happened that night and finally sunrise approached.  Slowly we moved out from the camp and saw the surroundings.  We saw a lot of elephant footprints!

After breakfast and all logistics were checked, we packed up and moved to another area to continue patrolling…… it’s my life!!!