Ambassador Visits Ujung Kulon National Park

UKNP Chief Officer Agus Priambudi, Ambassador Taylor, Political Officer Dr Waite, and some of the UKNP staff.

Ambassador David Taylor recently visited Ujung Kulon National Park (UKNP) in Banten Province, Java. Home to many species of endangered animals, including the Javan rhinoceros, Javan gibbon, leopard, green pea fowl, and three species of horn bill, the park is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Taylor was accompanied by the park’s Chief Officer Agus Priambudi – a long serving conservationist with the Ministry of Forestry and a graduate of New Zealand’s University of Otago.

New Zealand began cooperation with Ujung Kulon in 1990, with staff from the New Zealand Department of Conservation working alongside their counterparts from the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry to establish the area as a national park. Ujung Kulon became a national park in 1992.

To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of this project, the New Zealand Embassy republished the Ujung Kulon National Park Handbook in 2010. Written by New Zealander Margaret Clarbrough, whose husband Malcolm led the New Zealand project for several years, the book is a comprehensive guide to the ecology, geography, and history of the area. The book also includes information on visiting this remote and inaccessible part of Java.

Taylor said: “I was struck by Ujung Kulon’s great beauty and unspoiled environment. New Zealand is proud to be associated with the protection of this great wilderness and its plants and animals, which survive on the fringe of the one of the world’s most densely populated islands”.