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Dealing with wild elephant, Cut Mutia CRU asked to return to protected areas

Atjeh Post – North Aceh district government was asked to bring Cut Mutia Conflict Respond Unit (CRU) back to Cut Mutia Elephant Conservation Center (ECC), said Irsadi Aristora, S.Hut, MH, director of Save Nature and Animals-Plants (SILFA) through a press release to ATJEHPOST.co, on Monday, 1 December 2014.

“Legally, the area designated is the location [Cut Mutia CRU} is log pond area of PT MPT, not at the Lubuk Tilam Local Transmigration areas. Besides the location is not sufficient for CRU, Cut Mutia CRU management is not comfortable because located in people’s areas,” said Irsadi.

Irsadi said that request to activate CRU was based on the idea that trained elephants would be able to responds conflicts in North Aceh immediately. He said that Cut Mutia CRU has shown reduced conflicts in the area. SILFA had asked for bupati (local head of district) to bring CRU back to Cut Mutia protected forest, to avoid wrong procedure and conflict with local people.

“Our worries are food supplies and water availability in the location, inside local transmigration areas, are not sufficient enough,” he said.

He said that animal conflict management needed elephants with strong and healthy condition. In addition, healthy and clean environment also required to care for elephants condition in CRU.

“At the moment, small springs with little water for elephants to clean up and bath are not enough for the whole population,” he said. Meanwhile, location provided by government at the protected forest has better clean water facility and environment. Especially, Cut Mutia CRU is located near Krueng Kreuto.

“We have asked budget for housing of elephants trainers and other facilities which will be built as soon as possible to support CRU activities,” he said adding that they have asked local government to increase budget for elephants food and their trainers.

“Our concerns for elephants and its trainers must be prioritized because they have heavy task to deal with conflict that could happen anytime either in people’s lands, farms and plantations,” he added.

Irsadi hoped that protected forest appointed for Cut Mutia CRU can function in accordance to spatial planning. The location is officially has been assigned as CRU location in a spatial planning issued by North Aceh government.

“why we are letting PT MPU disrupting our legal system which has legalized and allocated at North Aceh budget. So, to prevent implementing regulation, we requested North Aceh bupati to bring CRU position back to designated ECC location to save and handle elephant and human conflict,” he said.

In previous article, people of three sub districts of Krueng Kreuto have confiscated three units of excavators belong to PT Mandum Payah Tamita (PT MPT) on 10 November 2014. After the arrest, all activities of the company had stopped. The company had also pulled three units of beco held by local villagers to North Sumatra. The company had pushed Cut Mutia CRU evicted from their location forcing them to move out to Lubuk Tilam transmigration location. Boy Nashruddin Agus

The article was published at Atjehpost, member of content syndication of Ekuatorial.

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