Travel Notes

Day 3 The weather had remained good and we awoke to a clear, bright morning. We had decided to head back to Grajagan early as we still had a lot of ground to cover on this third and final day in the region. Nonetheless, there was time for some more exploring and we set off along the beach in the opposite direction to the one we'd taken on the previous evening. After a few hundred metres we came to a small estuary. Fortunately the tide was still low and had not yet covered up the evidence of pre-dawn activity. Animal tracks at the water's edge were clearly visible and we could identify them as deer, wild pig and some kind of large cat. This led us to recall a conversation with one of the Australian surfers the previous evening. He had shown us a photograph which a friend of his had taken at the same estuary. It showed a human foot beside an extremely large paw mark in the sand, which hewas certain could only be the track of a tiger.
Since the official number of Javanese tigers remaining in the wild is thought to be no ma than about five, and these are only to be found in the Meru Betiri National Park some distance away, this information was very exciting. Further more, our friend told us, there had been a number of recent sightings of tigers by surfers, the latest being a report by an American couple who had seen a pair of the animals just a few months back.

Meru Betiri was, in fact, our next destination Located further west along the south coast, this 50,000 hectare reserve shows quite different conditions to those found at South Banyuwangi Whereas the former is comparatively dry an flat, Meru Betiri is hilly and has a higher average rainfall than most of the surrounding area. There are still pockets of true tropical rain fores and some of the more exotic plants to be fount there include the Rafflesia Zollingeriana (L. and Balanophora Fungosa (L.), both of which are no longer conserved anywhere else. As to fauna, there are wild pigs, muncak deer, squir rels, civet cats, black panthers, leopards and leaf monkeys, to name a few. There are sea and shore birds, such as egrets and terns, as, well as two species of hornbill.
Then there is the almost extinct Javanese tiger (panthera tigris sondaica L.). Estimates of the numbers of this species remaining range from three to about eight, yet no one is really certain. An intensive study in 1978 concluded that there were between three and five, and in 1981 the footprints of a large male were identified. Sadly, however, the general consensus is that this animal will, before long, become extinct, the chances of its survival being hampered still more by the fact that the high rain forest, to where it has been forced to retreat, is a far from suitable habitat.
Conservation efforts at Meru Betiri are focused largely on the turtle nesting beaches, of which Sukamade is the most famous. Five species of turtle are known to lay eggs here. Emerging from the sea under cover of darkness, usually bet wee about 9 p.m. and midnight, the turtles crawl slowly up the beach, deposit their eggs be neat half a metre of sand and return to the water in process that takes several hours to complete. he number of the creatures appearing each evening depends largely on the season, although there tends to be more activity around the time of the full moon. Wardens at the beach collect the egg shortly after they are laid and rebury them in; safe place, away from poachers and from the danger of being eaten by leopards, which may be seen lurking in anticipation on the edge of the forest.

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