We proudly present our first scientific article that we just published on the Bawean warty pigs! --> See section publication. In a nutshell it tells you that there are between 172–377 individuals of these pigs living on the island of Bawean! This is not much... Additionally we found out that the pigs seem to stay in the forest during the day, but in the night they come out to feed in the community forests, where there is probably more food, or food richer in energy, than in the forest. Of course this makes them more vulnerable to local communities who hunt them to protect their crops.

​The media picked up the story and a lot of websites report about Bawean warty pigs! We hope that this raises more interest in the species' conservation!

​Here are a few links to websites that report about Bawean warty pigs:
National Geographic
BBC Earth
New Scientist
Mongabay

Dinda and Fanti are currently on Bawean island. They follow a tight research schedule, consisting of camera trapping, observing Bawean warty pigs, and surveying the forests looking for all kind of wildlife during the night. How do they observe the pigs? The girls and their forest ranger climb on trees and wait until the pigs appear! This is the safest place, and a place where they are hidden from the pigs so they are not detected immediately. This is also why the photos sometimes have a bit of the canopy in the foreground! And the team is successful: a couple of times they were able to see the animals and even managed to take photos and notes of their behavior. We are very proud. Keeping in mind that BEKI is the first project that studies the Bawean warty pig, these are ground-breaking data! :-)

Bawean warty pigs observed from a tree :-) Photos by BEKI / Dinda Rahayu Istiqomah

Our fantastic photographer Iing Iryantoro, the education and media officer from Cikananga Wildlife Centre in Sukabumi, will travel to Bawean soon to produce some short movies that introduce our work on Bawean. He will bring his friend Fadhil, who is also experienced in filming. We can't wait to see their work!!! To give you a first impression about Iing's talent, here you see some wonderful photos that he took during his last trip to the island!

Written by Fanti.

This is my first time to visit Bawean island, in October 2015 with together with Shafia (who is on Bawean island for the third time) and Dinda. First we went from Jakarta to Surabaya by train, then travelled to the city Gresik and then took a ferry from Gresik harbor to Bawean island. The express ship takes 4 hours, there is also a slow ship that can transport cars and needs 8 hours.

When I arrived on Bawean, I was really amazed with the beautiful beach. In general, Bawean has comfortable and safe ambience, so I love it here. The Bawean residents are so friendly and majority they have a good financial condition. Some of the residents work in Singapur and Malaysia. Almost of the resident staying on Bawean own cattle, which they keep on the fields. Others do fishing and farming to covered their daily needs.  The photo shows some fish catchement from the local community. They consume their harvest to covered their daily needed but also they sell it to the traditional market.

There is no gas station in Bawean. Some people sell gasoline in small shops and we can even buy gasoline with retail. Bawean has no mall or big shopping centre, but there are many traditional market which open in every early morning. They sell everything including (traditional) food, but also everything that is necessary such as clothes, toiletries, and others.

Photo by Fanti.

Written by Shafia Zahra

Smog caused by huge fires in Sumatra and Borneo is one of the most well known news in Indonesia media recently. I would like to describe this phenomenon as this century’s biggest crime to humanity with residents who live in three main Islands (Sumatera, Borneo or Kalimantan, Celebes or Sulawesi) become the victims. Sadly, although this disaster has been well informed within Indonesia, not all people learn from it, including people on Bawean Island. Most people prefer to blame the government without addressing the main problem, which is forest destruction. 
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This is my third time on Bawean island and I found the rate of forest burning in this Island is getting more severe. In November 2014, when I first came to the island, local people used to burn community forest located nearby the main road so it is easily spotted. By that time the forest ranger could not do anything as this forest is located outside the protected area, thus it is legal to burn the forest. However now in October 2015, at my third visit, people burn the community forest nearby the border of the protected areas. Since right now it is the dry season when the wind blows heavily and it has not been raining for seven months, the impact is easily predicted: the fires spread to the protected area. Parts of the forest are now burning, for example in Alas Timur (See picture) and very close to Payung-Payung, where we also have camera traps installed.
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Community forest is burnt near Payung-Payung

In the daylight when we were driving home after installing the camera traps, we could see thick smoke moving up toward the sky from places within the hilly forests. We have no idea which forest was being burned. The forest rangers have tried to discourage this action, unfortunately they don’t have enough evidence that people cause burning near or within the protected area. The reason is that the protected areas are poorly demarcated; the poles which are placed along the forest border to determine the protected area are mostly not in good condition and some of them even disappeared. It is difficult for the rangers to determine forest borders from a map, let along explain the border to the people. As a consequence, only one case of burning protected forest has been investigated so far.
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The purpose of forest burning mostly remains unknown. In my assumption, people do not worry about burning the forest on Bawean because they are convinced that a national disaster like on Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Sulawesi can not happen in their own native area because there is no peat land on Bawean. They forget that the impact of forest burning is not only smog, but also the destruction of the forest, even if it is accidentally. This may entail biodiversity reduction, species extirpation and ecosystem destruction. If they continue with this habit of burning land, especially species that are endemic to Bawean and only occur here, may face extinction during the next decades.

Burnt forest in Alas Timur

We were surprised and had a good laugh when we found this video on our camera traps! Warty pigs and macaques feeding together!!!
New ideas for zoos to keep these two species together :-)

During the last visit on Bawean the team was able to directly observe the warty pigs during their activities in the late afternoon. The groups consisted of 7 and 10 individuals respectively, including offspring. The pigs didn't seem to be bothered too much by the team watching them and stayed for more then 30 minutes each time. In contrast, a pig approached Pidi and Silvi as close as a few meters! As pigs can be dangerous, they scared them off before the animal came too close!

Of course we took very detailed notes of all behavior we saw. For the next visit of Bawean island we plan to repeat similar observations, as data on Bawean warty pig behavior has never before been collected systematically.
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(Photos: Sandy Leo, BEKI)

Last Monday Iing from Cikananga Wildlife Center and Shafia went to meet two graduates from Fahutan-IPB (Faculty of Forestry of Bogor Agriculture University) who will go to Bawean in October to continue our work on the Bawean warty pigs. During the meeting they discussed the project, the methods we use, and organized the departure. We are very exited to welcome them in our team!!! 

Shafia Zahra who has been a BEKI member from the very beginning went to India to spread the news about our findings. She joined the "Student Conference on Conservation Science" in Bangalore, India, on 8-11 September 2015 to presented a poster on the attitude of Bawean local people towards crop-raiding by warty pigs. "The conference was an event that gave me the wonderful experience to see and compare how conservation is seen in another country than Indonesia", Shafia said. During this conference young conservationists from all over the world, but especially Asia, meet and share information about their projects and conservation efforts. It's great that BEKI could be part of the conference!
The poster can be downloaded in the new website page "JESP Publications".

Shafia (right) with friends and colleagues in front of her poster at the Student Conference on Conservation Science 2015 in Bangalore, India