Lou

This portrait will be about me! It will be an assessment of my whole amazing experience. To put things into perspective, going to Indonesia represented an incredible opportunity for me. It was a chance to put my accumulated knowledge about ecotourism, from obtaining my license and from my masters work, into practice. It also presented a different human-wildlife conflict that I was not familiar with. During my masters work, I studied the human-wolf conflict in France. Working in Indonesia was very different, not only was it the human-elephant conflict, but it was in a developing country. This trip also presented a few personal challenges: learning a new language and moving to a new country whose culture is vastly different from any I had visited before.

Here, I lay my trip out for you, step by step. During my trip I was lucky enough to be surrounded by many great people who helped me along my journey. One of the reasons I came to Banda Aceh was my friend Wiza, a local from the area who also works in environmental conservation. After many discussions with Wiza and her colleagues, Shayne and Luke, I was quickly brought up to speed with the local context. I was introduced to many other people in our field and was told the history of the region as well as the major threats to the environment. They were able to give me tips to having a successful transition. This allowed me to better integrate with the locals. I would describe the Indonesian language as easy because there are no grammar rules and after practicing some vocabulary I learned off the internet, I quickly had a handle on things. However, my Indonesian was very basic and I quickly became lost in a conversation that strayed away from the usual topics like family, work, and where are you from. For meetings and these portraits, I always needed a translator to accompany me. The language barrier was the main reason that stopped me from interviewing local farmers and the local population as I initially intended. Unfortunately, I could not always have a translator with me. When I did have the opportunity to speak with someone from the local population, I did not trust my basic Indonesian translation skills to faithfully portray what the locals were telling me. An added difficulty was that the local language is Acehneese, and although they speak Indonesian when they talk amongst themselves, they use Acehneese too! So imagine my disappointment when I enthusiastically went into the field with my basic Indonesian, with a team of about 10 people (mostly men!) and I was not even able to understand the topic of discussion because they were speaking Acehneese. The area of Aceh is beautiful and the locals are very friendly, so despite the language barrier, I felt very comfortable.

Regarding my job, I faced some additional challeges. First, I arrived at a time when Flora and Fauna International (FFI, see project description) were reorganizing their teams. Some of the key players working in the Conservation Response Unit (CRU, see project description) no longer worked for FFI and the office in Banda Aceh was about to receive a new manager. Under these circumstances, it was a little difficult to find someone to follow me and support my work. In addition to the managerial changes at FFI, I had to adapt to a new way of working. Things in Indonesia do not go at the same pace, we must take into consideration all stakeholders before making any new decision. I had to reorganize my calendar multiple times (I recently read the original plan I wrote, I now realize that my ambition to receive the first “volun-tourists” before my departure was completely unrealistic). Also, what I greatly enjoyed during my stay was the number of opportunities I had to work on different projects (for example, I participated in a Reef Check Assessment around the island of Pulau Banyaks). There is so much to do in order to protect the environment here, once introduced to people working the in conservation field, it is possibly to get involved in a large number of projects. As with any job lasting a short period of time, I wish I could have done more, but I think I have built the foundation for my project and it will continue to grow.

One of my favorite parts about my job was to be apart of the fieldwork, in the camps with the domestc elephants (I did not see any wild elephants during my stay). The elephant is an incredibly fascinating and quite imposing animal. I was impressed by the way they were able to respond to voice command and was touched by the relationships that were created between the elephants and their mahouts: for example, in the Mane camp, there is one mahout who likes to joke around, similarly, his elephant likes to sprinkle water on the people near him and acts like a clown. It was in the field and through the stories that were told that I could get a better view and understanding of the conflict with wild elephants. It should be noted that we are here in a very different context than my work in France. The Indonesian government is the agency in charge of wildlife, but there is no means of support for the local population in most districts of Aceh. There is no compensation system, which, according to those working on the conflict, could not be created due to high levels of corruption. The elephant, in this context, represents a serious threat to the average subsidence of a family and their living conditions. The destruction of a field just before a time of harvest can have a serious impact on the family who owns the field. Also, the conflict with elephants is unlikely to reduce due to the increasing rate of deforestation. The government of Aceh is trying to validate a spatial plan for reducing the forest in the region of Aceh (now 65%) down to 45%, which would have a disastrous consequence for the survival of species such as the orangutan, the Sumatran tiger, the Sumatran elephant and the Sumatran rhino (http://www.avaaz.org/en/the_plan_to_kill_orangutans_cb2/?fpla). The jungle around Aceh is nevertheless an exceptional environment and during each of my treks, which involved spending the night in the forest, I was always impressed by the diversity of species we encountered. I hope that the charismatic elephant can become an emblem to protect this magnificent ecosystem through ecotourism.

The CRU and the Community Rangers are important projects to help save the environment around Aceh (see project descriptions and portraits of Community Rangers). These two projects are combined by FFI as monitoring tools for the human-elephant conflict and represents an essential support system in the areas where the government has been absent (the government is one of many partners who participated in the implementation of the CRU). Those projects prevent an escalation of the conflicts, which if not managed, can lead to incidents such as the kidnapping of a baby wild elephant in southern Aceh (see portrait Suji). Both programs also have an important educational objective for the local population. However, I think their educational potential has not yet been reached. In my recommendations, I suggested the creation of an interpretive center to disseminate more information about the Sumatran elephant and the conflict between them and humans. When I spoke with the locals who were not directly affected by the conflict with elephants (people living in Banda Aceh for example), they had no knowledge of the reasons of these conflicts (the impact of deforestation on elephant habitat, the crops planted on the paths usually followed by the elephants, etc.). Some also imagined that the elephants were consciously going outside their territory to feed in agricultural fields. They do not realize that it was the complete opposite, humans are intruding on elephants territory. The options for long term solutions would be through the change of crops cultivated to those that do not attract elephants (lemon, coffee, peppers, etc.). This has also been poorly explored. An educational program presenting the long term solutions, possibly including the creation of an educational garden where the crops that allow cohabitation with elephants could be demonstrated at the CRUs. These actions could be supported by the implementation of my main proposal to FFI and partners to develop ecoutourism at the CRU through a “volun-tourism” program at the camp.

I am now at the end of my stay and I think I have gained the experience that I was hoping for. Though sometimes I still feel a bit frustrated! Sometimes it was difficult for me to adapt to the working methods and the local pace. One of the main problems that I witnesed several times while working in the environmental conservation area in Aceh is the lack of collaboration. In France, there is some competition between different NGOs in relation to data and funding. But here, everything seems secret, everyone is on their own side until collaboration is mandatory, only then is the information shared. This hindered my schedule and the pace that I was used to working. In addition, I witnessed a large number of projects supported by large donations (Aceh received strong international aid following the tsunami), I was often surprised by the lack of follow-up on some of these projects. This made me realize an important point: these projects do not require follow-up action by Westerners, but instead require support from the local people and requires them to find their own solutions, allowing a better outcome in the long term.

In the end, my experience in Banda Aceh has given me the confidence to work in different contexts, the ability to adjust my theoretical knowledge and put it into practice, and it was an incredibly opportunity to expand my network. But mostly, it allowed me to discover a beautiful region, I will return with a head full of memories, from treks in the jungle, a game of dominos with the locals, and fantastic scuba diving. I will soon take the time to develop my next project, and I will soon start my thesis on the conflict between wildlife and people with a focus on the importance of relations between various players and the impact of these relations on the levels of conflict. The field work will focus on the conflict between man and the jaguar in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico.

I am now on my way to a new adventure…