How Indonesias Komodo dragons found themselves at the centre of a livelihood vs conservation deba

Being a gateway to the 1,733-sq-km (670-square-mile) Komodo National Park is both a blessing and a curse for the town.

Established in 1980 to protect the giant lizards found only on the islands of Komodo, Padar and Rinca, the park became a Unesco World Heritage site in 1991.

Since then, Komodo has put Labuan Bajo, as well as Flores, on the map. In 2018 alone, 200,000 tourists came to see the dragons – but mass tourism also brought an avalanche of changes.

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Investment began pouring into the sleepy, majority-Muslim fishing hamlet. The resorts and tourist facilities that sprang up on increasingly expensive plots of rugged coastal land began rubbing shoulders with mosques, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, dive shops and European bistros along Labuan Bajo’s main coastal thoroughfare, Soekarno Hatta.

Among the latest sea-facing developments are a Starbucks; a giant in the Meru franchise of Indonesian five-star hotels; and a yet-to-be-completed tourist wharf esplanade complete with open-air food court.

The development carries on along the coastline well onto the Waecicu peninsula, to the town’s northwest, where a large building site now carries the Marriott hotels’ banner and real estate prices are the highest.

This inflated one-horse town is being transformed into one of the “10 new Balis” Indonesian President Joko Widodo has called for in an attempt to boost far-flung economies with tourism.

It was the president himself who inaugurated the new Komodo Airport terminal in December 2015. Although in Labuan Bajo, the airport was renamed after the dragon’s main den and the new terminal is able to welcome as many as 1.5 million tourists per year. The airport’s capacity had been 150,000.

The brakes on Labuan Bajo’s much-needed post-pandemic revival, however, could be applied by the authorities’ attempt to preserve Komodo National Park – the main source of income for the tourism-reliant town.

In July, Indonesian authorities announced a twenty-five-fold hike in the park’s entry fee, from 150,000 rupiah (US$10) to 3,750,000 rupiah (US$250). Between July 28 and August 1, disappointed locals took to Labuan Bajo’s streets in peaceful protests, and threatened a month-long embargo on all tourism-related services.

On the final day of the protests, a journalist and three other people were detained by authorities. For that reason – and because freedom of expression is rare in Indonesia, where harassment and threats to human rights activists and journalists are ongoing – most of the people spoken to for this article insisted on anonymity.

“The fact that most locals do not want to speak publicly says a lot that they are afraid of a possible retaliation,” says author and writer Andreas Harsono, who has covered Indonesia for Human Rights Watch since 2008. “It might be baseless, but it shows that there’s fear in the air.”

Frustration at the badly timed proposal – after two years without tourism – is understandable, but this wasn’t the first time the government had attempted to raise the fee.

The conservation of Komodo National Park has been on the agenda since 2019, when it was proposed that the park should be closed for a year to help restore the populations of dragons and deer they feed on.

After local uproar, a large increase in the entry fee – to US$500, and then US$1,000 – to control visitor numbers was proposed, although neither was adopted.

These very expensive tickets would have allowed visitors to enter the park multiple times for up to one year.

“But realistically, who wants to, or can, come again, especially if travelling from abroad?” says Edgar Lembor, owner of Labuan Bajo’s Raes Cafe and a member of the Muhammadiyah Society, an NGO that promotes a modern interpretation of Islam.

Widodo commented on the matter on July 21 on the presidential secretariat’s YouTube channel, saying that the government had decided to focus on conservation on Komodo and Padar while allowing more affordable tourism to flourish on Rinca Island, which has an estimated 1,300 dragons and has remained closed since late 2020, pending controversial tourism developments.

“Rinca Island also has a similar Komodo dragon just like that in Komodo Island,” said the president. “If tourists are keen to see the Komodo dragon, then they can go to Rinca Island.”

But according to several operators in Labuan Bajo, most tourists would consider Rinca a poor alternative, and prefer to visit Komodo and Padar island, where a high viewpoint and Pink Beach are popular Instagram spots.

The government’s plan would also place many of the national park’s best dive sites off-limits to those unable to pay the steep entry fee.

“We demonstrated peacefully on the streets for three or four days until the government rethought its decision and postponed the price increase to January 1, 2023,” Lembor says. “But next year, we will have the same problem.”

If a coherent balance between conservation and tourism management is to be found, most local tourism operators agree that park fees should cater to different categories of visitors, and there should be long-term control on the impact of visitor numbers.

“Park fees are one thing, but how do they benefit the park? It would be excellent if funds are put back into the general park infrastructure,” says a liveaboard cruise operator who has worked in Labuan Bajo and Komodo for more than 10 years.

“There are insufficient designated and safe fixed moorings for all boats; [a sufficient amount] may put an end to the damage to coral by anchors and their chains. This is a real issue that needs to be addressed in any of the snorkelling and easy-to-get dive sites.

“There has also got to be more focused enforcement of no-fishing zones in the Unesco protected area.”

A more expensive Komodo National Park may also sound the death knell for tourism to the east, in the rest of Flores.

“Komodo is still the priority since Labuan Bajo gets more attention by super-premium tourism, and because of that, all the development programmes are not focused on Flores in general, but only on Labuan Bajo,” says a tourist guide based in the town of Ruteng, a four-hour drive to the east.

Among other attractions, Ruteng boasts the Liang Bua cave, where scientists found the remains of Homo floresiensis in 2003. This species of pygmy human inhabited Flores about 50,000 years ago, before the arrival of modern humans.

Even further east is the highland town of Bajawa, set under the shadow of the cone-shaped volcano Inerie, Flores’ tallest peak, and surrounded by waterfalls, hot springs and traditional villages.

Another five hours east are the tricoloured crater lakes of Kelimutu, Flores’ second-best-known attraction. But the vast majority of tourists head west from Labuan Bajo – to the Komodo National Park – not east.

When I finally set foot on rugged Komodo Island, I find lazy, huge dragons sunbathing on the beach.

“They just came down from the mountains after mating, are very tired and won’t move for long,” explains a park ranger.

At this time of the year, the beasts make it very easy for the large number of tourists who moor here either on day trips from Labuan Bajo or at the end of the increasingly popular four-day/three-night backpacker cruises that leave from Lombok, next to Bali, 350km to the west.

As rangers help tourists pose safely for coveted dragon selfies, Komodo’s few locals boisterously hawk for business, offering wooden figurines, T-shirts, batik and other dragon-related tourist trinkets.

I ask my guide whether he thinks that raising the entry price to the dragon’s den would be good for the region, and he shakes his head.

“If we’ll have to, next year in January, we will be ready to protest again”, he says.

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