Forked Tongues Rule

KOMODO, Indonesia —  Mohammed Sidik used to sell goats to Komodo National Park to feed to the wild Komodo dragons, the world’s largest lizards, in a gory display for tourists.

Park officials banned the practice a decade ago because they worried that the dragons were becoming lazy. Now the 10-foot-long predators waddle three miles to this squalid coastal village, raid Sidik’s herd and eat his goats for free.

“For the last two years they have been coming to the village,” said Sidik, 60, who has lost seven animals to the dragons. “When they get thirsty, they come down to our well. The park no longer feeds goats to the dragons, so now the dragons come here.”

The dragons’ visits highlight how things have gone in Komodo National Park since its founding in 1980: great for dragons, not so great for people (and still not good for goats).

The park, about 300 miles east of Bali, is one of the few places in Indonesia where people are scarce. It is also one of the few places in the country where the need to protect nature has been placed above the economic interests of people. The result is a park that is pristine and well-protected, a rare species that appears to be thriving, a place where damaged coral reefs are making a comeback and the human population lives in squalor.

Komodo National Park boasts crystal-clear water, miles of deserted beaches and world-class dive sites where rushing currents help protect the reefs from bleaching. A visitor can sail among the park’s islands all day and only occasionally see another boat.

The creation of the park, which the U.S.-based Nature Conservancy helps manage, brought sharp restrictions on the ways in which villagers could make a living. Hunting, farming and logging in dragon habitat was banned. So were bombing the reefs with homemade explosives and fishing with cyanide.

Amid the influx of tourists, little has been done to create new economic opportunities for the villagers.

“What we regret most is that we welcomed the national park with open arms but they haven’t done anything for us in 20 years,” said Amin Bakar, the village secretary.

The park was established in part to protect the Komodo dragon, which is found only on the islands in or near the park. The species, which became known to scientists less than a century ago, is officially classified as vulnerable. Today there are about 5,000 dragons in the wild.

The Komodo, which shares a common ancestor with dinosaurs, is the largest of the monitor lizards and hunts such creatures as deer, pigs, goats and other dragons. It can run quickly in short bursts but often lies in wait until an animal comes within a few feet, then attacks it. The constantly drooling Komodo has a mouthful of deadly septic bacteria, so an animal that escapes after being bitten is almost certain to die within a week. The dragon is immune.

Komodos have poor hearing but an extraordinary sense of smell. The tips of their long, pale, forked tongues have odor receptors and continually flick in and out as the animals plod along, swaying from side to side. A Komodo can smell carrion from 2 1/2 miles away.

A dragon rarely attacks humans, although at least one person reportedly has been eaten in recent times -- an elderly Swiss tourist who apparently took a nap under a tree. Newspaper editor Phil Bronstein was bitten on the foot by a Komodo at the Los Angeles Zoo in 2001 after his then-wife, actress Sharon Stone, gave him a behind-the-scenes tour for Father’s Day.

At Komodo National Park, visitors can approach within a few yards. A ranger stands by with a long stick to fend off any animal that appears threatening, although it seems scant protection.

Komodo island is about the size of the San Gabriel Valley and its population is tiny, roughly 1,300 in Komodo village and a dozen or so who stay at the park headquarters. The ramshackle village stretches along Loh Liang bay to the south, and its setting is spectacular. It sits on a narrow strip of land, with steep hills rising behind it.

The island’s beauty stands in stunning contrast to the poverty of the village.

“It used to be easy for us to hunt for deer and get food, and we used to chop down the trees to build houses, and if we wanted to go fishing it was unlimited,” said Mala, who, like many Indonesians, goes by one name.

A plump woman of 35, Mala sells food and toiletries to her neighbors from a kiosk next to her house. “Since the national park,” she said, “we have been half-dead to get something to eat because everything is restricted.”

Komodo is one of the poorest villages in Indonesia, a country where more than a quarter of the population lives below the official poverty line, on family income of less than $75 a month.

Most of the flimsy houses appear to have been made from scrap lumber. Built on stilts, some lean precariously. Men and women lounge beneath the structures, which offer the only shade in the village.

Komodo has no power lines; at night, generators provide electricity. Women fetch water from a well in jugs they balance on their heads. They cook over open fires. The only street is unpaved, but there are no cars anyway, just a couple of motorbikes.

There is no sewage system, and inevitably waste ends up in the bay. Near the shore, the sea is a filthy brown. Trash floats on the surface and litters the beach. When the tide is out, dozens of fishing boats sit in mud.

School here ends with sixth grade, and few families can afford to send their children for more education in Labuan Bajo, a three-hour boat ride away on Flores island. To fill their days, some children swim in the sea, others play in the dirt. A few use empty cigarette packs as toys. Chickens and goats wander through the village.

Some of the men pass the time playing dominoes. As a crowd watched one recent day, four men sat in the dirt to play, using an old boogie board for a table. There is little money with which to gamble; the losers pay with their dignity, wearing a D-cell battery hanging on a string from an ear during the next match.

Gone are the days when fishermen using explosives could get a ton of fish in an hour. Most fishermen agree with the ban on destructive practices but complain that the park fishing rules overall are too restrictive. They say they are lucky now to haul in 40 pounds a day using traditional nets or lines.

Construction of a small hotel or guest house could give an economic boost to the community, but no outsider is likely to invest in a village where the headman demands cash from any visitor he notices entering.

Some villagers make a living carving dragons of wood or shell to sell to the few tourists who visit each day. But lack of initiative and resources condemns many to a simple life of subsistence fishing.

“This is a protected area, so you cannot do much,” said Faisal, 53, a fisherman and father of six.

Many villagers resent the Nature Conservancy for its role in setting the rules. The TNC, as it is known here, is so widely disliked that it has far better name recognition in Komodo than in the United States.

“People here thought the TNC had a long-term plan to raise income and the standard of living in the village,” said Hermansyah Akbar, who sells wooden dragons at the park. “But so far, there has been no significant change.”

The Nature Conservancy last year transferred management of the park to Putri Naga Komodo, an Indonesian company. The conservancy owns 60% of it and most of the management staff remains the same.

Villagers say they get nothing from the $20 that foreign visitors, who number about 19,000 a year, pay to enter the park.

“People consider the TNC to be the enemy,” said Isahaka Mansur, 55, who ekes out a living carving little dragons from shells. “They think it’s weird that a foreign nongovernmental organization can be so involved in the national park while we never got any part of it.”

Mansur received training through the Nature Conservancy for his carving and is more positive than most about the benefits of the park. He was once shot in the leg while helping catch poachers from another island who were blowing up the reefs near Komodo.

“Now we have these handicrafts,” he said as he polished one of his dragons. “It is better than destroying the reefs.”

The Nature Conservancy recognizes that many residents are critical of its role in the park but says that is to be expected given the restrictions on their activities.

“You know, you cannot please everybody,” conservancy spokeswoman Tri Soekirman said in Bali. “When you’re doing conservation work on the ground, you will be perceived as limiting people’s access.”

Residents will benefit in the long term with the recovery of the reef, she said, but it is taking years for them to see that the coral and fish are reviving.

“The hardest thing is that you can’t show the result immediately to everybody,” she said. “But over the years, the reef is getting better naturally. People can see it, tourists can see it.”

Sidik, the goat owner, said he didn’t know whether the dragons on Komodo were also growing in number or just getting bolder.

Until the mid-1990s, he and other villagers sold goats to the park. Several times a week, the animals were slaughtered and hung from trees for the dragons to feed on. The feedings attracted tourists who came to see the dragons tear the animals apart.

Today Sidik allows his goats to roam free and graze at the outskirts of the village. One day, while checking on the animals, he saw a goat walking toward a dragon that was lying in the grass as if asleep. When the goat drew close, the dragon suddenly swung its huge tail and smashed the animal to the ground.

Before the dragon could bite it, Sidik said, he began throwing stones at the lizard and drove it back. He rescued the goat, which was injured but recovered.

Sidik accepts the need to protect the Komodo by restricting human activity -- even though a thriving dragon population will continue to pose a danger to his goats.

“If they find us cutting trees, they can put us in jail,” he said. “It’s hard, because if we want to build houses, we have to buy wood from Labuan Bajo. But what can we say? It’s the law.”