By: Syamsidar

Pekanbaru (29/03)-On 29 March 2010, Standard Operating Procedure for Flying Squad was socialized in Pekanbaru. The Head of Conservation Institute, Raflis Panjaitan from Directorate General Conservation and Biodiversity of Forestry Department opened the event. Through this SOP, any parties involved in the implementation of human-elephant conflict mitigation can have a clear guideline of practicing flying squad approach.
In his keynote speech, Raflis Panjaitan said that Forestry Department was serious in managing elephants. “In near future, we will build Elephant Training Center in Tesso Nilo as an effort to handle human-elephant conflict in Riau,” Raflis said. 40 participants from related government institutions, NGO from some areas in Sumatra and representatives from companies around Tesso Nilo National Park etc attended the event.
Flying Squad is an approach or technique to minimize human-elephant conflict by driving back or escorting wild elephant to their habitat. With this approach, it is expected that human-elephant conflict is organizely handled and at the same time unexpected things that may occur to both human beings and elephants can be avoided.
Flying squad is a team comprising of trained elephants and mahouts that are assigned to handle human-elephant conflict. In their operation, this team is equipped with other tools to help them manage elephant raids. The implementation of Flying Squad in minimizing human-elephant conflict can provide benefits for both human and the elephant. First, it’s effective to drive the wild elephants back to their habitat. This can prevent the community from suffering huge loss. Secondly, it can enhance community’s motivation to cultivate since there is a team patroling the area from elephants’ raid. Next, it will empower captured elephants from Elephant Training Centre as well as minimize budget for nurturing captured elephants. Lastly, flying squad elephants can be developed as an object for ecotourism.
SOP of Flying Squad aims at providing reference for all Flying Squad operators in implementing the Flying Squad approach. This SOP arranges scheme for driving and esorting wild elephants, nurturing Flying Squad elephants, and giving medical check and treatment for Flying Squad elephants. This SOP also arranges monitoring and evaluation scheme which will be used to evaluate and grade the performance of Flying Squad operators.This evaluation is expected to spur each Flying Squad operator to perform better.
The condition of degraded elephant habitats will certainly trigger human-elephant conflict. One way to minimize the conflict is by operating Flying Squad . Around Tesso Nilo forest block, four Flying Squad teams have operated. They were organized by WWF and the Conservation Agency of Riau, PT. RAPP, PT. Inti Indosawit and PT. Musim Mas. However for the last two operators (Inti Indosawit and Musim Mas) still have no elephants. The human-elephant conflict mitigation under their operation area is still handled by trained mahouts.