 Elephants on a Crowded Street
|
Aug. 4, 2003 — Eighty elephants that had earned a meager living on the streets of Bangkok have returned to the jungles after being retrained to help patrol conservation areas, officials said Monday.
The scheme is part of a long-running campaign to clear the capital of the elephants, which pose a hazard by roaming nightlife districts, begging from tourists who pay to feed them.
The Wildlife Conservation Office said that the elephants, aged between 10 and 50, are the first graduates from a pilot project at Mah Takhrai National Park in northern Chiang Mai.
|
 
|
|||||||
"The project is aimed at both improving conservation efforts and solving the elephant problem," a spokesman said. "Elephants should stay in the forest, not on the street," he added.
The owners of the elephants, who volunteered them to the program, will be paid up to 6,000 baht ($140) a month while their animals take part.
As well as patrolling the thick jungle in search of poachers and traffickers, they will also bear sick and injured animals to the park headquarters to receive veterinary care.
Elephant handlers, or mahouts, say they must roam the city streets because there is not enough feed for the animals to survive on out in the far-flung provinces.
However, city elephants are frequently the cause of traffic accidents, and several have run amok in the city, injuring passersby before being subdued or shot dead by police.
Thailand's elephant herd, which numbered some 150,000 animals 100 years ago, is in peril. Just 2,257 of them remain in the wild and some 150 die each year, according to the Forest Industry Organization.
< news main
Name: Asian Elephant (Elephas maximus)
Primary Classification: Proboscidea (Elephants) Location: India and Southeast Asia. Habitat: Mainly tropical scrub forest. Also thick jungle and savannah. Diet: Mainly grasses. Also bark, roots, leaves, fruits and stems of trees, vines and shrubs. Size: Up to 21 feet in length, 10 feet in height and 5.5 tons in weight. Description: Grayish to brown in color. Sparse, coarse body hair. Thick, dry skin. Long trunk with single finger-like projection. Two bumps on forehead. Columnar legs. Large, fan-like ears. Males have two long, ivory tusks. Cool Facts: They can consume more than 500 pounds of vegetation per day. They urinate 1.5 gallons at a time and up to 15 gallons a day. They use their trunks — which contain up to 100,000 muscles — to suck and spray water, to lift heavy objects, to grasp small objects, to smell, and to detect heat and texture. Conservation Status: Endangered Major Threats: Habitat loss and degradation, as well as poaching. What Can I Do?: Visit the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Elephant Help Project, and Friends of the Asian Elephant for information on how you can help. |
||
