Preventing Bird Extinction, Large Bird Nets installed in Arjuna Mountainside Forest were Exterminated
A joint team from PROFAUNA Indonesia and the Junggo Forest Management police destroyed the large nets used to catch birds illegally in the forest area in Pusung Lading, the slopes of Mount Arjuna (24/11/2022). More than 20 knots on the tree trunks used to install bird nets to trap the birds were destroyed by cutting them into small pieces, so they could no longer be used.
A few days earlier, the PROFAUNA Indonesia team received information from forest farmers that someone had installed bird nets in the Pusung Lading forest area. According to the forest farmers, they saw at least 5 birds that had been entangled in the nets.
Based on the information of forest farmers, the PROFAUNA Indonesia team immediately carried out patrols ranging from Mount Pucung to conservation forests that belong to the Raden Soerjo Forest Park (locally abbreviated as Tahura) area. The forest in the Pusung Lading area is bordered with the conservation forests that belong to the Tahura Raden Soerjo area.
The forest patrol was fruitful resulting the discovery of more than 20 knots to install the large bird trapping nets in the forest area. After being destroyed, the team collects information to find the perpetrators.
Mount Pucung and its surroundings, which are on the slopes of Mount Arjuna, are one of the forest areas that are included in the monitoring priority of the PROFAUNA Indonesia team. Before 2021, in this area a lot of people caught birds with bird trapping nets and sap. Animal hunters using hunting dogs (local people call them gladak) that happened quite often. They hunted primates, boars, and hedgehogs.
In 2021 a forest farmer group in Mount Pucung requested PROFAUNA Indonesia's assistance to restore the damaged protected forests. PROFAUNA then provided thousands of tree seedlings to be planted in the protected areas which was damaged by forest fires in 2018. Unfortunately, after the forest fire, the protected forest was then planted with vegetables by farmers.
Since 2021, PROFAUNA Indonesia together with forest farmer groups and also supported by Perhutani (Forestry Management), have been actively carrying out forest conservation activities and wildlife protection from hunting. As a result, more than 5000 fruit tree and Ficus spp seedlings have been planted in the forest area of Mount Pucung and its surroundings. Some singing birds that used to be almost extinct locally, such as the long-tailed shrike (Lanius schach), have now begun to appear again.
The reappearance of the long-tailed shrike and other singing birds in the forests of Mount Pucung and its surroundings occurs because wild caught birds in nature have decreased drastically. The decrease in bird catching rates is due to routine patrols carried out by the PROFAUNA Indonesia team and education to the local community.
Massive catching or poaching of singing birds using bird trapping nets and sap, made some species locally extinct in the forest. Prinia familiaris, white-eyes and the long-tailed shrike, are bird species that are widely caught in the forest to be traded in the bird (animal) market.