Rosek dedicated to wildlife

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Rosek dedicated to wildlife

Bambang M., The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta

March 16, 2004

 

The name of environmental crusader Rosek Nursahid is

heard almost every time people discuss wildlife

protection in Indonesia.

 

Rosek is the founder and director of ProFauna, a

non-governmental organization dedicated to wildlife

protection. Through this organization he has tried to

lift the veil on the illegal trade in protected

species in Indonesia, having realized that it poses a

serious threat to Indonesia's wildlife sustainability.

 

 

One of the organization's activities was an

investigation into the trading of turtles on Bali

between 1999 and 2001.

 

Rosek said that during the investigation, it was

discovered that the number of turtles killed in Bali

was the world's greatest. Consequently, ProFauna

started to campaign against the illegal trade in

turtles.

 

Thanks to great pressure from ProFauna, in cooperation

with international diving organization PADI-Europe and

hundreds of foreign travel agencies, the Indonesian

government finally took stringent measures against the

practice.

 

As a result, illegal turtle trade and killing in Bali

is now reduced by 80 percent. " As long as you have

sufficient motivation and courage, a complex problem

like the turtle trade in Bali can also be solved, "

Rosek said.

 

His great love of animals is a big asset in the

attempt to save Indonesia's wildlife, which has shown

an increasing vulnerability toward extinction.

 

" When I was studying in an Islamic boarding school in

Liquisa, East Timor (now independent Timor Leste), a

Muslim cleric taught me that cricket-fighting was

sinful and prohibited, " he said. That has remained in

his memory even today.

 

While studying at the school of biology at state

Brawijaya University, Malang, East Java, he once had a

quarrel with a friend who experimented on animals for

his thesis.

 

Rosek thought his friend was torturing rats and

rabbits by running an electric current through these

animals to observe their pain threshold.

 

For him, the experiment was not important for human

beings.

 

" What's the use of measuring the pain threshold of

animals? " he asked.

 

ProFauna, whose head office is located in Malang, East

Java, has, since 1998, had a well-organized membership

system. Its total membership is now around 2,000

people from many places in Indonesia and abroad,

including Indonesians in musical groups Slank and

Cokelat.

 

ProFauna is also a member of the Special Survival

Network (SSN), an international coalition committed to

the implementation of CITES (the Convention on

International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and

Fauna).

 

Although Indonesia has Law No. 5/1990 on the

conservation of biological natural resources and their

ecosystem, and bans trading in protected animals, in

reality illegal trading in such animals can easily be

found at any bird market in Indonesia's major cities.

 

" When I visited Pramuka market, Jakarta, I was shocked

to see how easy it was to purchase a protected

animal, " said Rosek, father of Nada Prinia and Canakya

Galerita.

 

Reacting to this state of affairs, he contacted a

number of environmental organizations to join forces

with them in handling problems related to the illegal

trade in protected animals, but to no avail.

 

Finally, along with his wife, Made Astuti, and a

friend, Eko Hardianto, Rosek set up an organization

for the protection of wildlife, Animal Conservation

for Life (KSBK), on December 23, 1994.

 

In 2003, this organization, which has the Javan black

or gray long-tailed monkey as its symbol, was renamed

ProFauna to make it easier to remember.

 

Since it was first established, KSBK consistently

provided advocacy on wildlife conservation, although

it did not receive huge financial support.

 

Strangely, owing to this consistency and lack of

financial support, many people joined the organization

and showed their militancy in implementing the

organization's programs.

 

To ensure that it was a credible environmental

organization, KSBK received training from one of the

world's most famous -- Greenpeace.

 

" They sent some people to train us in organizing

demonstrations and campaigns and also in building a

professional organization, " Rosek said.

 

ProFauna has also applied the methods used by a number

of international environmental organizations. It has,

for example, adopted investigative methods from the

Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and a

fund-raising model introduced by the World Society for

the Protection of Animals (WSPA).

 

As the organization has a serious intent, ProFauna has

scored several outstanding achievements. For

investigative purposes it infiltrated one of its

members into a mafia-like network that was smuggling

orangutans out of Indonesia.

 

As a result, in June 2003, action by ProFauna, in

cooperation with the Jakarta Police and the

directorate for the protection of forest and natural

resources, led to the arrest of the leader of the

smuggling network.

 

Rosek and ProFauna members have also documented the

process of catching birds with bent beaks from eastern

Indonesia and the route they take to the bird market,

in a film titled Flying without wings.

 

Today, he added, a national airline tightly

scrutinizes the procedure for dispatching birds from

eastern Indonesia. The Indonesian Military commander

has also banned a warship from carrying these birds.

At the same time, the government officially stopped

the export of these birds last year.

 

Other activities that ProFauna has been engaged in

include surveys on the trade in primates in Sulawesi

and on the trade in primate meat in Lampung, Sumatra,

an investigation into zoos in Indonesia and an

investigation into the trade in bears and their body

parts in Indonesia.

 

These investigations, Rosek said, were top of the

organization's priority list as they produced

irrefutable evidence.

 

There are risks entailed, of course, in carrying out

these activities to protect wildlife. Rosek and his

colleagues in ProFauna have often received physical

threats and been terrorized.

 

In 1995, for example, he was kidnapped by the military

for two days because KSBK protested the destruction of

an urban forest in Malang for the construction of an

upmarket housing complex.

 

He said that the urban forest was home to about 30

bird species. The next year, someone threw a Molotov

cocktail at his house.

 

Last year, members of ProFauna were beaten black and

blue by hoodlums from Pramuka market as they

confiscated protected animals on sale there.

 

Rosek's mobile phone also receives short texts

containing terror messages. " I would like to change

the number but it would cause problems for my friends,

who usually contact me on this number. As wildlife

protection entails great personal risk, few

non-governmental organizations are interested in

getting involved in this undertaking.

 

" What ProFauna has been doing is highly risky as it

interferes with other people's lives, " said Rosek, who

is also one of the founders of Petungsewu Animal

Rescue Center, Malang.

 

Now Rosek and ProFauna have received wider

recognition.

 

" He is my hero, " said Willie Smits, director of The

Gibbon Foundation, an organization also devoted to

wildlife protection in Indonesia. Thanks to support

from the Gibbon Foundation, ProFauna now has its own

environmental education center, the ProFauna-Wildlife

Education Center (P-WEC), in Petungsewu, Malang.

 

Despite receiving frequent threats, Rosek has

consistently advocated the protection of wildlife in

Indonesia. The International Union for the

Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN)

has warned that many animal species face the threat of

extinction in Indonesia.

 

This warning has become a main concern for Rosek. " I

don't care: If it is time for me to die, then I'm

ready to die, " he said, without the slightest trace of

fear.

 

Keep up the good work, Rosek!

 

 

 

 

 

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