Authoritarianism and Conservation: How a Dictator Shaped the Future of an Endangered Bird

Indonesia is a young country — in more ways than one.

Its current democratic government dates back under three decades to 1998, after the fall of Soeharto, the military dictator who led the country for 32 years.

It’s also demographically young, with a median age of just 31. That means fewer and fewer people in Indonesia remember the time they were under Soeharto’s ‘New Order’ rule.

But despite the fading memory of Soeharto’s reign, one of the decisions he made in the later years — selecting a National Precious Bird — is outlasting his regime.

Ten days into January 1993, President Soeharto signed his fourth Presidential Decree of that year. The first three dealt with setting the domestic retail sale prices of petroleum and tariffs for electricity and public transportation. The fourth declared an until-then largely unknown bird, the Javan hawk-eagle (Nisaetus bartelsi), as Indonesia’s national bird. The United States had its bald eagle, China had its giant panda, and now Indonesia had its hawk-eagle.

Three reasons favored giving the Javan hawk-eagle this title.

First, their appearance and prominent crest mirrors the mythical bird Garuda, which is central to Indonesia’s national coat of arms, the Garuda Pancasila.

Second, the loss of rainforest on Java — Indonesia’s most densely populated and least forested island — meant very few hawk-eagles remained, and increased attention could be beneficial to their conservation.

Third, a national bird had to be found exclusively within Indonesia, and Soeharto’s regime heavily favored Java, leading to a “Javanization” of Indonesian politics, culture, and economic development. The Javan hawk-eagle fit like a glove.

Ornithologist Bas van Balen, one of the first people to study the species, recalls that the decree established three national “mascots” — a popular animal, a charming one, and a rare one. The animals were selected “during a workshop in 1993, attended by representatives of various governmental bodies, such as the Forest and Environmental departments, the parliament, the scientific authority, local universities, media mass, NGOs and various experts. Worries that the eagle would undergo the same fate as for instance the black-naped oriole — provincial faunal symbol of Central Java, which was much sought after for the bird trade in the years after its nomination — were discounted, as its protection was believed by the committee to be the authorities’ responsibility.”

In 1993 I was a young biologist, eager to study birds in the rainforest. The announcement of the Javan hawk-eagle as Indonesia’s national bird, and the observation by French naturalists of a juvenile on a mountain in central Java, spurred me on to make the move to Indonesia.

At the time there were no photographs of the bird — either in the wild or in captivity — and I had to rely on some 30 preserved skins in Dutch museums to get a good idea what the bird looked like. I also had the fortune to become acquainted with the then 87-year-old ornithologist Hans Bartels, the middle of the Bartels family (Max Sr, Max Jr, Hans, and Ernst) after which Javan hawk-eagles received their taxonomic name.

Javan hawk-eagles were already legally protected — all birds of prey in Indonesia were put on the county’s protected species list in 1970, signed by Soeharto’s long-trusted Minister of Agriculture, Toyib Hadiwinata — and none lived in zoos or private collections. After the national bird declaration, any individuals or institutions that wanted to keep a Javan hawk-eagle had to receive presidential permission. Only one person was granted this: Ibu Tien, Soeharto’s wife. Her Javan hawk-eagle, a juvenile bird almost certainly illegally taken from its nest, was displayed at a Jakarta zoo run and managed by one of many Soeharto family foundations.

In those first years during many of my visits, more zoo directors expressed the desire to display Javan hawk-eagles and even breed them. Of course zoos were not allowed to obtain them, but “gifts by anonymous donors” created a loophole. Two years after the declaration, three zoos on Java displayed or had displayed a total of 14 Javan hawk-eagles, six of whom died within one year.

Zoos were not the only ones eager to own a national bird. In an Indonesian context, owning and displaying legally protected species was, and perhaps still is, seen as a sign of status, of “being untouchable” or above the law. Ibu Tien’s display of a Javan hawk-eagle could be interpreted in this context, as was the decision by a national celebrity to have himself photographed in traditional dress next to his pet Javan hawk-eagle for the women’s magazine Femina.

It was, and still is, challenging to keep a rainforest eagle in captivity, as attested by the high mortality rates in Indonesian zoos. Most of the Javan hawk-eagles I saw in zoos in the 1990s and 2000s were first-year birds — easily recognizable as such because young birds have blueish eyes that turn yellow as they get older.  This was not evidence of captive breeding but attested to them being poached from their nests.

Looking back, the decision to declare such a rare bird as a national symbol, without first putting proper protection and management in place, may not have been wise. When I started my research on Java, every large eagle regardless of species was described as a “Javan eagle,” but this changed rapidly and the Javan hawk-eagle quickly became recognized as something special. Enforcement of protected species legislation in Indonesia was and continues to be weak, and under Soeharto’s rule corruption and nepotism allowed for exceptions to be made.

Today numerous people and zoos keep Javan hawk-eagles, and young birds are frequently offered for sale. In the early years one could find them in the dark corners of one of the many bird markets that are present throughout Indonesia, but increasingly they are offered for sale on e-commerce platforms and social media sites.

But all is not negative.

At time of the declaration, very little was known about Javan hawk-eagles. Based on very limited surveys — including ones done by Bas van Balen — they were considered among the rarest birds in the world, with fewer than 60 pairs confined to five or six widely separated forest fragments and millions of people living in the areas in between. The first people who recorded the species and commented on their conservation were non-Indonesian birders, either living in Indonesia or visiting.

This has now changed. Today Javan hawk-eagles are arguably Indonesia’s most frequently studied birds, with university students’ conducting projects year after year on the eagles themselves, their habitat, and their distribution.

Meanwhile a solid group of dedicated raptor enthusiasts works to study, monitor, and protect the species. We now know more about Javan hawk-eagles than ever before, and the earlier population estimates were off by an order of magnitude.

And it turned out that the birds were not confined to the island of Java: They’ve been observed flying on neighboring Bali as well.

Trade and continuing habitat loss remain the main threats to the species, but guard nest protection programs have been very successful.

Zaini Rakhman, chairman of Raptor Indonesia, says that “between 2001 and 2021, 40 confiscated or surrendered Javan hawk-eagles were released and 27 of them survived in their new habitats.”

In 2023 two Javan hawk-eagles, captive born in an Indonesian zoo, were released into a national park in western Java — an area that might not have been protected if not for the birds.

“The presence of Javan hawk-eagles was one of the reasons why the forests on Mt. Murio in central Java were declared as a Grand Forest Park,” says Rakhman. “Increased protection of additional forest areas are currently under review.”

In the early 1990s Hans Bartels was of the opinion that the survival of the Javan hawk-eagle and its forest was fully dependent on Indonesia’s younger generation. They have taken this to heart. The eagle is now the pride of many Indonesians — and rightly so — and December 2025 saw the opening of the Bartels Javan Hawk-Eagle Conservation Museum, in a historic building that had originally been the private residence of the Bartels family.

Even President Soeharto could not have imagined this would be the cumulation of his single-handed declaration of Indonesia’s national bird.

References:

Nijman, V. 2020. Illegal trade in Indonesia’s National Rare Animal has moved online. Oryx 54(1), 12.

Nijman, V., Shepherd, C.R., Van Balen, S. 2009. Declaration of the Javan hawk eagle Spizaetus bartelsi as Indonesia’s National Rare Animal impedes conservation of the species. Oryx 43(1), 122-128.

Thiollay, J.M., Meyburg, B.U. 1988. Forest fragmentation and the conservation of raptors: a survey on the island of Java. Biological Conservation 44(4),229-250.

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