MARINO : His Passion for Wildlife Surveys

People who visit the SaveSumatra.org website might see a picture of a man carrying a GPS antenna on every page of the website. His name is Marino and he is a wildlife conflict mitigation assistant for the WWF project in Bukit Barisan Selatan in southern Sumatra.

For this Sumatra-born Javanese man, the Bukit Barisan Selatan (BBS) forest is his playground. He started as a porter for WWF’s forest inventory program in 1996, spending two months in the field every year. In 1999, WWF‘s project leader in BBS asked Marino to help set up an office in Kota Agung. But unfortunately, he chose to quit because he couldn’t stand working behind the desk. Instead, he went to work for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s camera trapping team for about two years.

In 2003, he met Elisabet Purastuti, WWF’s Geographic Information System (GIS) team leader at BBS, who then offered him a job at WWF again in the field, as a surveyor assistant working to survey wildlife around BBS. During his time working as a wildlife surveyor, he developed skills and knowledge for dealing with human-elephant conflict. Since 2006, he has been assisting WWF and partners in dealing with human-elephant conflict around BBS National Park. Encroachment of the park for coffee production has led to a massive loss of elephant, tiger and rhino habitat. The resulting human-elephant conflict has caused the death of many elephants and people.

Working in the field has given Marino a lot of thrilling experiences, such as being besieged by a herd of wild elephants and facing difficult human-elephant conflicts in Ulu Belu, Suoh in 2006-2007 which, according to Marino, was the most difficult conflict he’s ever seen. It was because the forests already encroached by coffee plantations and the elephants have had nowhere to go. The elephants were always back to the settlements and plantations though Marino and the team already escorted them back to the forest. This was going on and on, until in 2007, these wild elephants were finally relocated to Bengkunat area.

Although his work now is connecting so much with elephants, Marino doesn’t limit his skills only to elephants. Marino also learns about other species while he is in the field with the team, for example, studying the habits of the Sumatran rhino when he’s spending time with the Rhino Patrol Unit team.

When asked about the difficult side of his job, he says, “The only hard thing for me is when I have to be alone in the field without any friend.”

Supriyanto is a real organizer. After finishing high school, he started his environmental career as a volunteer in a local NGO called Wanacala for community awareness assessments in the Rajabasa Mountains of Lampung, Sumatra. He talked to traditional gold miners in the area to educate them about the function of the Rajabasa Mountains and introduce them to alternative income opportunities. With support from the community, he successfully established an association of Rajabasa hiking tour guides.

Since then, Supriyanto worked from one organization to another for years on community education and awareness.

In 2004, he joined WWF in Lampung to document WWF’s investigation of illegal coffee crop encroachment in Bukit Barisan Selatan for about three months. Since then he has continued working with WWF as awareness/education officer for Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park, working in close collaboration with BBS National Park officials, the Rhino Patrol Unit, and the Wildlife Conservation Society. With the team, he has been conducting awareness road shows to elementary schools near the national park to educate children about wildlife and environment.

Aside from educating people about environment, Supriyanto is also responsible for documenting the project’s progress in the field photographically. This task made him face a lot of dangerous journeys –not to mention that in order to make good photos, sometimes he has had close encounters with wild elephants. And once, he had to follow a truck suspected of carrying illegal logs or illegal coffee beans from the national park to the trader.

“The roads out there are very muddy in the rainy season, very dangerous to be passed, especially with a motorcycle. But, a motorcycle is the only thing we can use to get to the location. It’s important to ride with an experienced driver,” said Supriyanto.

One day he drove to an area of human-elephant conflict in Talang Kudus with a motorcycle taxi and its inexperienced driver. Both Supriyanto and the driver fell into a steep gulch and luckily Supriyanto was hooked onto a coffee tree. “But in that situation, I didn’t think about myself. All that I could think about was my camera,” he continues.

Enjoying outdoor activities and photography, Supriyanto always takes every opportunity to learn while working in the field. “For me, it’s not just a job, it’s my passion. I can always find new things and new friends in the field and learn from them,” Supriyanto ends our conversation, after sipping his last drop of Kuyungarang coffee, green and fair trade coffee made by people living around BBS National Park.