Tesso Nilo national park is a home for the most rare and endangered flora and fauna, it is one of the most largest lowland rainforest in Sumatra not so far from Pekanbaru the capital city of Riau Province, the park covers more than 90,000 hectares of forested land when it was officially declared as a National Park on August 28th, 2004 by the Indonesian Government. It's growth is more than twice as large as its former size by December the same year.
Tesso Nilo national park stretches along 4 districts, namely the districts of Palalawan, Indragiri Hulu, Kuantan Sengingi and Kampar. Tesso Nilo is planned to be expanded to cover 100,000 hectares to serve not only as the lungs for the Indonesia archipelago but also for the world.
Riau used to have large tracts of jungle, however, because of large scale wild fires, and the building of palm oil plantations, almost two third of primary forests here has been destroyed. For this reason and also to stop further degradation, the government has mapped out the area as a National Park, while plantations already in the park are being reverted to the jungles.
But, biologists assert that the Tesso Nilo National Park still contains abundant tropical vascular plant species, surpassing those found in the Amazon region. The park is habitat to Sumatra’s endangered elephants, tigers, and tapirs. There are boars, deer, sun bear and other wildlife, three species of primates include the agile gibbon and siamang protected types, 14 kinds of ectoparasites and 50 species of fish and 33 species of herpetofauna (the types of reptiles and amphibians). One of the reptiles are common and are highly protected sinyulong crocodile (Tomistoma Schlegeli). In 2012 Tesso Nilo counted some 150 elephants, while WWF found tracks of 50 Sumatran tigers. Nonetheless, the close proximity of the Park to human settlements still cause wild elephants to wander into villages and considered as pests by the local inhabitants. Illegal logging and wildfires also continue to threaten the Park.
What to do in the Tesso Nilo national park?
There are many activities here as the area is being maintained by the WWF (World Wide Fund) Indonesia now, there several teams like Elephants & Tigers conflicts and 2 others. Flying Squad is the team which manages the elephant conflicts, it is like a fast responding (helpline) team when the villagers have an issue with the elephants. There are 2 bedrooms in one Tesso guesthouse and 2 houses available plus extra beds at the national park near WWF flying squad camp, it is around 2km away from the nearest village. There should be enough space for upto 50 people with the camping area and also the hall. Tesso Nilo National park has a helipad so it is possible for some of the VVIP’s to flight straight to the camp and skip the busy roads.
Here we could do some great event like :
1. Elephant's patrol conflict mitigation & simulation.
2. Elephants care like bathing, preparing their special mineral food and feeding the elephants.
3. We could also do a ceremonial wild honey harvesting in the jungle. The major harvest time is around September to November, but we could always do the simulations. Not only the wild honey, if we visit during the harvest time, we will come across many varieties of jungle fruits too.
4. River Tour - here we could use a traditional boat for a day tour to go down the Tesso and Nilo river and witness the real jungle and its resident wildlife.
5. Tiger Education Tour such as mounting the camera traps as well as surveying their tracks, dirts, and preys.. here we will be assisted by the WWF Professional Tiger Team.