TESSO NILO NATIONAL PARK

Tesso Nilo National Park       

Tesso Nilo national park is a home for the most rare and endangered flora and fauna, it's one of the most largest lowland rainforest in Sumatra not so far from Pekanbaru the capital city of Riau Province, the park covers more than 90.000 hectares of forested land when it was officially declared as a National Park on august 28th, 2004 by the Indonesian government. Its growth more than twice as large of its former size by december the same year.

Tesso Nilo national park stretches along 4 districts, namely the districts of Palalawan, Indragiri Hulu, Kuantan Sengingi and Kampar. Tesso Nilo is planned to be expanded to cover 100,000 hectares to serve not only as the lungs for the Indonesia archipelago but also for the world.

Riau used to have large tracts of jungle, however, because of large scale wild fires, and the building of palm oil plantations, almost two third of primary forests here has been destroyed. 

For this reason, to stem further degradation, the government has mapped out the area as a National Park, while plantations already in the park are being reverted to the jungles.






But, biologists assert that the Tesso Nilo National Park still contains abundant tropical vascular plant species, surpassing those found in the Amazon region. The park is habitat to Sumatra’s endangered elephants, tigers, and tapirs. There are boars, deer, sun bear and other wildlife.

Three species of primates include the agile gibbon and siamang protected types, 14 kinds of ectoparasites and 50 species of fish and 33 species of herpetofauna (the types of reptiles and amphibians). One of the reptiles are common and are highly protected sinyulong crocodile (Tomistoma schlegelii). In 2012 Tesso Nilo counted some 150 elephants, while WWF found tracks of 50 Sumatran tigers.   Nonetheless, the close proximity of the Park to human settlements still cause wild elephants to wander into villages and considered as pests by the local inhabitants.   Illegal logging and wildfires also continue to threaten the Park.

What to do in the Tesso Nilo national park?

There are many activities here as the area is beeing maintained by the WWF (World Wild Fund) Indonesia now, there several teams like Elephants & Tigers conflicts, they are 2 different team. Flying Squad is the team who manage the elephant conflicts, its like a fast respond team when the villagers had an issues with elephants. There are 2 bedrooms in one Tesso guesthouse and 2 houses available plus extra beds at the national park near WWF flying squad camp. its around 2km away from the nearest village. theres should be enough space for upto 50 peoples altogether with the camping area and also the hall. Tesso nilo national park has an Helipad so its possible for some of the VVIP’s to flight straight to the camp and skip the dead roads.

1. Elephants patrol conflict mitigation & simulation.

2. Elephants care like bathe, prepared their special mineral food and feed the elephants.

3. We could also do a traditional ceremonial wild honey harvesting in the jungle. The major harvest time is around september to november, but we could always do the simulations. Not only the Wild honey if we visit during the harvest time there are many variety of jungle fruits as well.

4. River Tour, here we could use a traditional boat for a day tour to go down the Tesso and Nilo river, here you can witness the real jungle and wildlifes.

5. Tiger education tour such as mounting the camera traps as well as surveying their tracks, dirts, and preys.. Here we will be assisted by the WWF Professional Tiger Team in Tesso Nilo Natinal Park

Note :

We need to have a Special permit & Police report entering this Conservation Area, so inform us a few weeks before you actually arrive, we'll take care of everything. We only need a copy of your valid Visa / Kitas, Passport / ID Card

More Info !!!
By David Chan
Sumatra Discovery
Call/Sms/Whatsapp +628127649678 / +628153011111
BBM PIN 57848F5A