In Indonesia, lizard-hunting feeds families – and China’s traditional medicine industry

CIREBON, West Java: Armed with headlamps, pails and thin wooden sticks, Mr Dody Hermawan and his colleagues embark on a mission most nights around the villages of West and Central Java.

As they move from house to house, they are typically met by residents glad to be rid of a source of annoyance.

Mr Dody, 42, and his colleagues are house lizard hunters.

Using sticks about two metres long with glue applied at the tip, they nimbly stab the reptiles, then gently remove them from the stick and place them in the buckets.

On a good night, each hunter could catch about 400 lizards in eight hours – double the usual amount – especially if it has just rained and there are more insects for the lizards to feast on.

“It all started when my older brother gave me the task of finding house lizards because he sold them,” said Mr Dody, who started the job about 12 years ago. 

“Initially, nobody wanted to go lizard hunting as people did not believe it could make money.”

Mr Dody proved that it could. He caught about 100 lizards per night in his first few days and sold them for IDR150,000 (US$9) to his brother, who then sold them to a businessman exporting them to China for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) purposes.

The amount was quite significant at the time, as the cost of living in his village of Kertasura, in West Java’s Cirebon regency, was low compared to cities like Jakarta or Bandung.

As more people noticed him going about his work and saw that lizards were in demand, “slowly they started to join”, said Mr Dody.

Now, dozens among the 9,000 people in his village help hunt and process the lizards for export.

Also known as the common or Asian house gecko (Hemidactylus frenatus), or rumah cicak Asia in Bahasa Indonesia, the