Other Places to Visit

While I won’t have time to visit these places, I did stop by the National Parks office in Bogor to pick up some information on Halimun National Park and Ujung Kulon National Park. Both parks are currently involved in management projects to actively involve locals in preservation of the protected areas.

Halimun NP is about 50 to 100km SW of Jakarta and is a large primary rainforest. The park reports that more than 300 settlements exist inside, and more than 100,000 people depend on the land and resources of the park for survival. The main threats to the environmental ecosystem come from illegal logging and illegal gold mining. Gold mining can be particularly dangerous to the people and wildlife as a water-powered revolving drum is used to separate gold, and then mercury is used on top. The park is currently being sponsored by JICA, Japan International Cooperation Agency, to work together on a 5 year management project designed to increase community involvement. The park will still have special core zones where no development is allowed to take place, but will also be using an experimental approach that allows sustainable land and resource use in other areas and gives more responsibilities to locals in managing the park in hopes this will prevent the more dangerous practices of logging and mining.

(View from top as shown by ekowisata.com eco-tours)

Ujung Kulon NP is located on the Southwestern tip of Java and is home to the nearly extinct Java one-horned rhinoceroses and is a Unesco World Heritage Site. The park is difficult to get to and remote, and as I understand nearly impossible during the rainy season of Jan and Feb. However, it’s supposed to be an amazing park containing exotic wildlife like panthers, crocodiles, wild pigs, and of course rhinoceroses. The entrance is from Tamanjaya village, where local guides are hired for a fee of $25 a day. Locals from the village are also responsible for helping maintaining and managing the National Park, and run local homestays.

I tried to visit Mt. Gede Pangrango National Park in the town of Cibodas with Dr. Ko, but unfortunately the park is closed from Jan-Mar. The park ranger explained that the trails are yearly closed at this time to allow recovery from hosting tourists. This area was first made a tropical forest reserve back in 1889, making it one of the oldest formally established, and can be reached by public buses going between Jakarta and Bandung. The main attraction is a 10hour climb to the summit of Gunung Gede, a huge active volcano that dominates the landscape, and that passes waterfalls, hot springs, and a giant crater. The park is home to a World Biosphere reserve started by Unesco, thus has received help from the British Council and Voluntary Service Overseas Programme to create an excellent, and thick, guidebook in English and Indonesian detailing the hike and specific vegetation that can be seen. Guide services can also be arranged for a fee through the park to help further “interpret” the park. These services provided by the park started in response to acts of vandalism on the canopy trail and extreme litter on the mountain trail. The park management decided to increase patrols of rangers, provide “interpretation guides”, as well as the guidebook in hopes to increase awareness of proper care for a national park.