As reticulated pythons kill two Indonesian women in a month, why are encounters becoming frequent?

Past research has pointed to increasing deforestation in Indonesia for palm oil plantations
A reticulated python
A reticulated pythoniStock
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In the last one month, the province of South Sulawesi in Indonesia has witnessed what usually is in the realm of folklore: Two women killed and swallowed by reticulated pythons, the longest and third-heaviest snakes in the world.

There have been three other cases before the present two, where photographic and videographic proof exists of these pythons preying on and killing humans.

In 2017, Akbar Salubiro, a young farmer in the western part of the island of Sulawesi (where South Sulawesi province is also located) was killed and swallowed whole by a python.

Other victims include a 54-year-old woman killed in 2018, also in Sulawesi and a 54-year-old woman killed in 2022 on the island of Sumatra.

In the past, scientists have suggested that these encounters could be due to the thriving oil palm industry in Indonesia, due to which forests are being cleared in large numbers to make way for plantations.

Deforestation the culprit?

Global Forest Watch, an online platform that provides data and tools for monitoring forests, recently noted: “Primary forest loss in patches greater than 100 hectares made up 15% of the loss in Indonesia in 2023. The expansion of industrial plantations took place in several locations adjacent to existing oil palm and pulp and paper plantations in Central Kalimantan, West Kalimantan and West Papua.”

It added: “Small scale primary forest loss was also prevalent throughout the country in 2023. Small clearings for agriculture contributed to ongoing losses within several protected areas, including Tesso Nilo National Park and Rawa Singkil Wildlife Reserve. Other losses linked to mining could be seen in Sumatra, Maluku, Central Kalimantan and Sulawesi.”

Richard Burger, from the Organisms and Environment Research Division School of Biosciences at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom came out with a thesis in June 2022, which offered several insights about reticulated python behaviour in palm oil plantations.

“While habitat change threatens a large number of reptile taxa (Cox et al., 2022), there are many species of snake that can adapt to urban or agricultural areas, and even provide benefits to humans as predators of pests, although this proximity may also increase conflict,” Burger wrote in Ecology of the Reticulated Python (Malayopython reticulatus): Life in an Altered Landscape.

He added that his study “provided some initial evidence that suggests inhabiting oil palm plantations leads to changes in space use and movement behaviour (among pythons)”.

Reticulated pythons that inhabit plantations have smaller range distributions and move less frequently.

“Decreased space requirements in plantations may be indicative of increased densities, and there have been suggestions that population densities may increase for this species in oil palm plantations, but determining this empirically is extremely difficult,” Burger added.

He finally concludes: “Reticulated pythons may be able to adapt well to living in oil palm plantations. But there are potential trade-offs including increased human conflict and the presence of pollutants.”

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