Primata Endemik Mentawai di Pulau Sipora Terancam Kehilangan Habitat

Four primate species in Mentawai, Indonesia, are threatened with habitat loss due to massive logging. However, any attempt to make the habitats a conservation area must be first proposed to the Ministry of Environment and Forestry.

Four Mentawai endemic primates in Sipora Island, Mentawai Islands, West Sumatra are now increasingly threatened with habitat loss. The four primates are Bokkoi (Macaca pagensis), Joja pagai (Presbytis potenziani), Bilou (Hylobates klossii), and Simakobu (Simias concolor).

One important pocket of Mentawai primate habitat on Sipora Island is in the Berkat forest, Tuapeijat village, North Sipora. However, massive logging is currently taking place there with heavy equipment. The logging activity uses dozens of heavy equipment that continues to work non-stop throughout the day.

At the end of June 2022, Tempo, who visited the site, witnessed trees that are important for the primate's life, such as meranti and kruing, being the main targets of logging. The meranti and kruing trees were then taken out of the forest with heavy equipment to Berkat Beach, where the logpon was stacked.

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On Berkat Beach, hundreds of logs can be seen ready to be loaded onto pontoon boats. A pontoon boat at the logpon dock, already laden with 5,000 cubic meters of timber, was waiting to depart. Another pontoon boat is also waiting to load logs. The logs will be transported to Surabaya.

Mateus Sakaliau, a conservationist with "Malinggai Uma" in the Mentawai Islands, said that when he came in September 2021, the forest was still in good condition and there were many of the four primate species there.