It’s Been Ten Years Since I Lived in Bukit Lawang

During the trek, 20 minutes after the entrance gate of Gunung Leuser National Park, two orangutans were spotted hanging from the trees; they were seen as a mother and her infant. Dave was busy with his Nikon and pointed to them.

I began to consider that Bukit Lawang might be my ideal place to live; the animals here are incredible to see on a daily basis.

Sumatran Orangutan in Bukit Lawang.

My direct encounter with a Sumatran orangutan in the wild had been fulfilled, and my brain began to work to gather more information to serve as the reason and motivation for finding a way to live here—or is it worth it to make such a hasty decision?

After we finished our trek and had seen everything we wanted to see, our guide brought us to the point where rafting piqued our interest because we wanted to feel how it felt, it’s traditional rafting. We left the campsite by traditional rafting boat made of giant inner tubes, following the river downstream to the village of Bukit Lawang, and were directly dropped in front of our hotel. We decided to only do a day trek because the guide told us on the second day that we don’t walk to spot animals anymore; that’s mostly how the trek is organized, except you talked and discussed it with the guide in advance.

My attention and the two biologists were more focused on important things, after two years of learning about the behavior of nature inside and outside of Gunung Leuser National Park, I conducted my own study on the natural reactions and their impacts. The damage to the ecosystem outside the park has changed the behavior of nature. This could be seen from how the water of the river outside Gunung Leuser National Park, which is close to the palm oil plantation, is getting dry during the long summer. While my previous research within Gunung Leuser National Park has led me to a clear understanding that the rainforest ecosystem in Gunung Leuser National Park has its own roles to maintain the balance of the ecosystem for a larger area than the park size, trees located on the hillside to the edge of the river have more interdependent roles to stabilize soils from landslides during the rainy season due to massive degradation at the borders outside the Gunung Leuser National Park.

We spent our five days in Bukit Lawang gathering more photos and information about the animals that are likely to play important roles in the maintenance of the Leuser ecosystem: primates, raptors (birds of prey), and reptiles, the majority of which are native to this park. We also spent the last two days looking for as many pollination workers as we could find. They are the most important factors in ensuring that Gunung Leuser National Park continues to provide food for all fruit and seed eaters.

The biodiversity of Gunung Leuser National Park has been a strong reason to stay and even convinced me of all the opportunities that I could survive here. Bukit Lawang tourism in 2010 was not the same as today; it was conducted with a big disregard for the biodiversity of Gunung Leuser National Park, which has been providing income to many of us.

Opportunities for the ecotourism business and conservation in Bukit Lawang have become something that I have been preparing for since 12 years ago. Gunung Leuser National Park bordering village, Bukit Lawang, could be a great strategic area to conduct conservation efforts for its biodiversity preservation. Uncountable species call Leuser home. Their numbers outnumbered the scientists observing and doing research for them. 4,000 identified plant species, 382 species of birds, 52 species of amphibians and reptiles, and 102 species of mammals are just too much.

November 29, 2022, written by Bobi Handoko, Bukit Lawang.