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| ASIAN
GEOGRAPHIC JOURNAL |
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 Adventure |
| Operation Jumbo |
| A Truck Call to Save an Endangered Species |
| TEXT Rachel Lovelock |
| PHOTOS Agus Pande |
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| The Indonesian island of Sumatra once laid claim to some of the richest, most extensive tropical rainforests on Earth, where wild Sumatran elephants roamed freely in a habitat untouched by man. Today, as the forests are converted for commercial use at an unprecedented and unsustainable rate, the population of this small sub-species of Asian elephant is rapidly and tragically declining. Due to their shrinking habitat, the 1000 or so elephants left in the wild are forced to feed on the crops that have replaced their natural foods, creating a massive human-elephant confl ict, which often results in death by poisoning or shooting. With no easy solution, forestry offi cials have been forced to capture the elephants and hold them in special 'training centres', but their future is bleak. |
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| Eleven years ago, Australian entrepreneur-conservationist and long-time resident of Bali, Nigel Mason, was the recipient of an extraordinary proposal, in which he was invited to purchase nine Sumatran elephants. The creatures had been rescued and brought to Bali, where they had been living for three months. "I went to look at them out of curiosity more than anything else," explains Nigel, "I felt really sorry for them because they didn't seem happy. Their new habitat was a hot, dried-out rice fi eld with no trees, but I believed I could do something with it, so I bought them along with the land. To me it was just another challenge." |
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