Reconciling Nature and Culture in a Global Context? - Rainforest ...

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Sandra PannellJakarta introduced protective legislation, ‘Regulations for the Protection of Wild Animals’(Auffenberg 1981: 349), while in 1940 new hunting regulations for areas outside of Java wereenacted. The upshot of this legislation is that Komodo Island was designated a ‘managedgame reserve’ (WCMC 1994).Concerned about the number of Komodo dragons killed and captured on various ‘scientificexpeditions’ or slaughtered for their skins during the 1930s, a number of European scientistsapproached the government to establish further reserves to protect the dragon. Indeed, in1939 the Dutch Resident of Timor estimated that “several dozen to several hundred” dragonshad been shot on Komodo in the course of deer hunting expeditions (Auffenberg 1981: 350).More accurately, Auffenberg states that since the mid 1920s more than 500 dragons havebeen removed from Komodo (Figure 5), with at least 80 of these collected by museums(1981: 350).Responding to the conservation concerns of scientists, in 1938 the Self Government ofManggarai declared the islands of Rinca and Padar ‘nature reserves’. As part of thedeclaration a warden’s position was established, but not actually filled until 1968 and then itonly commenced operating in the reserved area in 1971 (Auffenberg 1981: 349). At thistime, and in keeping with the ‘game reserve’ status of Komodo Island, the NatureConservation and Wildlife Management Office in Bogor (on the island of Java) stillmaintained an annual harvest limit of five dragons, out of an estimated population of 5,000,though as Auffenberg points out, this was exceeded on several occasions (1981: 350, 352).In 1970, a new ‘managed game reserve’, Way Wuul, was established in western Flores,while in 1977 Komodo was accepted as a ‘biosphere reserve’ under the UNESCO Man andthe Biosphere Programme (WCMC 1994).The game and nature reserves on the islands of Komodo, Rinca and Padar, together with theisland of Gili Mota, became part of Komodo National Park (PHKA and TNC 2000, Vol. 1: 36),established by Ministerial Decree in 1980. More than any other protective measure taken inthe past, with the stroke of a pen the 1980 declaration transformed many of the everydaybehaviours and traditional practices of local people within the new Park borders into illegal orhighly regulated activities. This situation was exacerbated with the 1984 expansion of thePark’s boundaries to include the ‘games reserves’ of Way Wuul and Mburak in westernFlores, the protected forests of Mbeliling and Nggorang in the same region, and thesurrounding marine areas.Notwithstanding the criminalisation of many local activities that accompanied the 1980 and1984 declarations and extensions, Komodo National Park, like other national parks inIndonesia at this time, did not receive a solid legal standing until 1990, when newconservation laws were passed. Up until 1991, when the redeclaration process wascompleted, all Indonesian national parks owed their existence to a confusing series of edicts,designations and decrees (including reversible ministerial decrees) dating from Dutchcolonial times. In 1990 the Park was nominated by the Government of Indonesia andaccepted for inscription on the World Heritage List in 1991 as a ‘natural’ property based uponits ‘superlative natural features’ (criteria iii) and as the ‘habitat of a threatened species’(criteria iv), the Komodo monitor. As indicated in the original nomination document, theIUCN technical evaluation report and subsequent listing of the National Park, ‘nature’included the Park’s ‘rugged’ landscape (Figure 6), but was confined to the endangered‘dragons’ (Figure 7), the only acknowledged endemic inhabitants of this ‘dramatic space’.The current 25-year management plan for Komodo National Park, effective from 2000,proposes further extensions to the landscape boundaries of the Park, to include the island ofGili Banta and further marine areas. It also recommends the establishment of ‘buffer zones’in the north-east and south-west sections of the Park (PHKA and TNC 2000, Vol. 1: 36). Theproposed extension will increase the size of the Park from 1,817 square kilometres to 2,32120
Reconciling Nature and Culture in a Global Context?Lessons from the World Heritage Listsquare kilometres (PHKA and TNC 2000, Vol. 1: 36). The proposed extensions are, in part,driven by the IUCN evaluation of the original nomination by the Government of Indonesia,which stated that with “the increasing tourism and the singular focus on the Komododragons” there is a need to “broaden the interest of visitors to other natural attractions(particularly the marine environment)” (IUCN 1991: 27). Acting upon the IUCNrecommendations, in 1995 a ‘rapid ecological assessment’ was undertaken by The NatureConservancy (TNC). This assessment concluded that ‘limited eco-tourism and research’ arethe “only true sustainable uses” of the terrestrial portions of the Park (PHKA and TNC 2000,Vol. 1: 36). As such, the assessment recommended an extension of the Park’s borders toinclude marine areas with high biodiversity values and “high aesthetic values” (loc. cit.).Up until the mid 1990s, the “singular focus of the [P]ark”, and that of the previous regulationsand decrees, was on the “very impressive and remarkable animal – Varanus komodoensis”(IUCN 1991: 27). As far as the IUCN were concerned, the challenge facing the Park in thefuture was “to determine its [the Komodo dragon] particular importance to science and toconservation in the global context of other islands” (loc. cit.). As these comments suggests,up until this time the value of the Komodo dragon to the ‘international community’ and to thegeneral public had largely been that of a scientific curiosity. Through the popularisation ofscientific expeditions to the island in the pages of National Geographic (Burden 1927a;Broughton 1936), various travel accounts (e.g. Schilling 1957; Attenborough 1959), and intourist guidebooks (Dalton 1978), the ‘dragons’ have been transformed from evolutionaryoddities into ‘media-genic megafauna’ (Freeman and Kreuter 1994). In the words of theIUCN assessors, Komodo dragons are “dramatic or symbolic life forms” (1990: 28). In thefollowing pages I explore how the World Heritage listing of Komodo National Park set inmotion a reevaluation and representation of this dragon-focused view of nature. As I argue,the ‘scientific’ redefinition of ‘nature’ in terms of current ideas about biodiversity and ‘balance’has serious social and cultural implications for the approximately 3,267 individuals livingwithin the Park and for a further 16,816 people living in villages directly surrounding the Park(PHKA and TNC 2000, Vol. 1: 5).CULTURE WARS, PART IIn his account of the American Museum of Natural History scientific expedition to Komodoand Padar Islands in 1926, the leader of the expedition, W. Douglas Burden, describes theforty residents of the village of Komodo as ‘convicts’ (Figure 8). He goes on to characterisethe villagers as “a degenerate lot of diseased people, that have reached such a degradedstate that they don’t seem capable of curiosity” (1927b: 103). In contrast, Burden valorisesthe “wilderness of romantic Komodo” (Figure 9) and concludes, “Komodo is a place ‘whereevery prospect pleases, and only man is vile’” (1927b: 103). Burden’s depiction of theKomodo islanders arguably represents the first shot fired in the twentieth century in theensuing ‘culture wars’ aimed at vilifying the local population. As I discuss later in thischapter, Burden’s distinction between a ‘vile’ humanity and the ‘beautiful scenes’ afforded bynature on Komodo Island is a trope consistently reproduced in the history of this region as aprotected area.While Burden believed that the arrival of his yacht was a historic first for the inhabitants of theisland, according to Auffenberg there were at least four previous scientific expeditions to theisland in the period of 1910-1926 (1981: 363). As stated in the title of his book, Burden’saccount conjures up the idea of Komodo Island as a ‘lost world’. Yet, other accounts indicatethat Komodo, and the neighbouring islands of Sumbawa and Sumba, were historically caughtup in regional geo-politics, and from the 1600s were very much involved in the machinationsof Dutch colonisation in this part of eastern Indonesia.In an article based primarily upon the linguistic work of the Dutch missionary Father JilisVerheijen on the ‘people and language’ of Komodo (1982), the anthropologist, Rodney21
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