Encroachments threaten Togean National Marine Park

Ampana, Southeast Sulawesi (ANTARA News) - Encroachments on the Togean National Marine Park at Tojo Una-una, Southeast Sulawesi province, have been going on unchecked so that they may soon cause serious damage to the beautiful underwater wildlife, according to a local forestry officer.

Rasiman Kaimuddin, a staffer at the Togean Islands National Park office, said here on Tuesday residents close to the national park have been hunting Napoleon fish (Cheilinus undulates), an expensive species of coral saline water fish that are in high demand in Hong Kong and Japan for their supposed medicinal potential.

The fish are mostly caught by contaminating the waters with cyanide that make them easy to catch, he said, and therefore their population in the park was fast depleting. But in the process, the scenic under-sea beauty of the national park was also deteriorating.

The beauty of the Togean National Marine Park was characterized by the green coral reefs, but now the green was gradually turning white because of the appearance of the quickly multiplying sea centipede. This centipede is the main staple for Napoleon fish.

"If there`s no action to stop (the encroachments), the beauty of this area will soon only exist in our memory," Kaimuddin said, adding that a problem hampering efforts to halt the encroachments was the fact that the government had yet demarcate the borders of the park.

The government had declared the Togean waters a national marine through a Forestry Ministry decree in 2004 which mentions that Togean islands, situated in the middle of Tomini bay, with a total area of 362,605 hectares, including 10,659 hectares of protected forest on the islands.

This unclear status of the limits, he said, had often led the park authority to face problems. All the authority could do was going to the local people and explain to them about the need to preserve the environment there.

Source: AntaraNews.com