ProFauna's Community Outreach: Village Wildlife And Environment Regulation

Hunting ban board installationThe education field project of ProFauna, a wildlife protection organization in Indonesia, P-WEC (Petungsewu Wildlife Education Center) which is located in the foothills of Kawi mountain in East Java has been working together very well with the villagers living surrounding the center since its establishment - starting from recruiting employees and staff members from the villagers whose majority are illiterate and working as farmers, providing voluntary education or teaching to the remote schools in the villages, inviting the people to attend free seminars in the center, to providing many assistances in running some community development programs like reforestation, mobile library, mobile movie screening, holding regional traditional village festival, etc. The municipalities have also been very supportive and cooperative to ProFauna's assistances. They thank ProFauna for the works that they don't have capability of or even that the higher level government don't assign them to perform.

The latest cooperation between ProFauna and the villages is the production of village wildlife and environment regulation posted by the municipalities head on 26 April 2009. ProFauna initiated the rules because the organization discovered that on the villages where the local people are involved in many sustainable programs and activities, there is still some animal hunting and it turned out that the perpetrators are some outsiders and most are citizens. ProFauna thought that law enforcement would be the best way to tackle such crime yet there was no law to regulate it. For this reason, ProFauna proposed the idea to the municipalities and some leaders of the villagers about producing animal hunting ban as well as prepared some draft which was finally agreed and enacted.

Kucur government regulation number 3 year 2009 which was launched today (5 June 2009) to commemorate the world environment day, forbids anyone in the area of the villages to cut down or log some important trees like: the banyan tree where many wildlife depend their food on; the trees surrounding water springs and by the rivers or cliffs; and endangered trees; to kill and hunt wild animals, to keep protected wildlife as pets at homes, to fish unsustainably: using electricity or poison, and to litter non-degradable wastes. ProFauna believes by producing these rules the municipality will be helped by the villagers to enforce the law to keep their environment and live sustainably. ProFauna will also keep guiding the local to implement it and approach more villages, especially the ones near the forests where ProFauna runs its conservation movie screening, to do the same to save wildlife.

© 2003 - ProFauna Indonesia

ProFauna Indonesia is an Indonesian society for the protection of
wild animals and their habitats