Period: 14  December 2005 - 14 April 2006. Country: Indonesia
(1) Relationship between the Bird Community and Human Activities in a Mountainous Area Adjacent to a National Park in Indonesia
KATAOKA Miwa   (Division of Southeast Asian Area Studies)
Key Words: Bird Fauna, Farming Systems, Human Activities, Traditional Customs, National Park

Photo1: The national park administratively overlaps with 103 villages.
Photo 2, 3: Traditional laws not only confine the villagers to a single cropping pattern of rice and swidden cultivation, they also prohibit the sale of rice and the use of a rice mill.
(2) Recently, as the impact of development on natural habitats has become more apparent, many countries have designed and established protected areas to conserve forests and biodiversity. However, the settlement of protected areas, including local villages, has caused many conflicts between national parks and villagers.
  Previous studies only reported on the biodiversity of a forest and on the destruction of natural habitats by villagers separately; few studies have explored the relationships between the biodiversity of a protected area and human activities. Since the surrounding villages strictly influence the natural environment, it is important to consider how culture, people’s livelihoods, and the farming systems of a village relate to natural habitats.
  The objective of this study is to determine how birds in a secondary environment respond to different agricultural and social factors. I conducted research in three sites adjacent to a national park, where villagers practice different farming systems.

(3) The administration of the Gunung Halimun-Salak National Park in West Java Province administratively overlaps with that of 103 villages. The national park contains a mix of different types of land use. These include primary forests, secondary forests, tea estates, rice fields, and croplands. Villagers in and around the national park engage in various kinds of livelihood and farming systems. Some villages have experienced radical changes both in lifestyle and in farming systems, whereas others maintain traditional practices, following traditional customs and common law. In previous research, I found that farming systems and land-management practices influenced the composition and distribution of birds. This research was supposed to reveal the effects of temporal factors, such as changes in the season and in human activities, on birds at each research site.
   The research was conducted in three sites adjacent to the Gunung Halimun-Salak National Park from December 2005 to April 2006. Since birds from other areas were on migration to this area, I focused on the migrating species that use the secondary environment at the research sites. In addition, I conducted interviews with villagers on their socio-economic conditions.
  Recorded species of birds had declined at all sites. The reasons seemed to be the bad weather of the rainy season and changes in the habitat caused by human activity, such as the logging of fuel wood plantations, the conversion of large areas to intensive crop cultivation, and the reduction in low-cover vegetation because of livestock grazing. Migrating species utilized the secondary woodland at only one site.
  The socio-economic survey revealed that differences in the size of arable area and in the kinds of crops were influenced by the forms of land ownership as well as by the limitations placed on farming systems by traditional customs.
 
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