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BURMA
Asian Elephant Trafficking a Threat to Species
An elephant is being transported in a truck from Taungoo towards Pegu. (PHOTO: Reuters)
Between 50 and 100 Asian elephant calves and young female elephants are illegally smuggled from Burma to Thailand every year and sold to tourist-driven camps, according to a UK film-maker and a leading campaigner against the abuse of elephants.
In addition, they say, many elephants die while being trafficked through the mountainous jungle, and the issue threatens the future of the species.
Joanna Cary-Elwes, the campaign manger at London-based NGO Elephant Family, said that, according to its investigation, about 40 calves have been traded across the border from Burma into Thai camps in the past six months.
Elephants in Burma are traditionally used for logging and carrying materials in the rice industry. In conflict zones, many die or become disabled after stepping on landmines.
Elephant campaigners say that, after being smuggled to Thailand, the pachyderms end up being used for trekking, in festivals, as attractions in so-called wildlife parks, and for riding at tourist destinations in Thailand.
A new film by Ecologist Film Unit (EFU) in the UK, in association with Link TV and Elephant Family, alleges that the hunting and capturing of wild elephants often involves the slaughter of mothers and other protective family members with automatic weapons. Caught calves are then often subjected to a brutal “breaking-in” process where they are tied up, confined, starved, beaten and tortured in order to “break their spirits,” said EFU.
“In Thailand, they use knifes, axes and sticks to beat them … and anything that causes the elephants pain and makes them afraid of people. So, a lot of them died,” Sangduen “Lek” Chailert, the founder of Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai, was quoted as saying.
The EFU estimated that only one in three survive this inhumane “domestication” process.
The elephant campaigners also called on the Thai authorities to launch a fresh crackdown on elephant smuggling ahead of the next Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES) in Thailand in March 2013.
As many as one million British tourists visit Thailand’s tourist camps each year, it is estimated, leading to claims that they are unwittingly fueling this devastating trade, according to an EFU report.
Sugarcane is the major threat to the elephants. Because they love sugarbeet and therefore destroy the fields. Therefore, one must shoot them or chase them away from the fields of sugar cane. But this is the area where you can live elephants ever smaller and smaller.
The better roads and bigger machines do elephants unemployed. And cultivation and rubber plantations makes it harder to feed on them.
50-100 elephants from Burma to Thailand is probably not a big problem, they did come back, if not originally Thai elephant who moved to Burma. The problem is to feed them in Thailand in the places where tourists come.
It is not only sugarcanes that the elephants like, the wild elephants also come to locality for rice fields, and also licking salt from kitchens. with newer plantations and less place to graze, the elephants find little food like banana plants and even bamboo shoots. Elephant conservation is a very difficult task in the light of the cost and care involved. Still the world must do something to save them from extinction. as we all know, with the extinction of one species, another dozens of plant and animal species are threatened for extinction.
Thank you for featuring an article on this topic. After five years of living in Thailand, I am fed up with the abuse of elephants that I’ve seen and heard about from activists. I’ve never considered myself an animal activist, but I feel a strong connection to what’s happening to the elephants in Thailand and other parts of Southeast Asia. I’ve recently looked into registering a Thailand NGO that would advocate the protection of elephants in the Golden Triangle region where they are most at risk for smuggling and abuse. I don’t fault the tourists mentioned in this article; most tourists are unaware of the poor treatment that the elephants suffer. I think that it is up to the people who have the facts to spread the word to tourists who may then decide upon a different way to spend their money in Thailand.