(MY) No room left to roam

[Guest guest]

The Star, Malaysia

http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/

 

Tuesday, August 14, 2001

Environment

 

By S.S. Yoga

IT DOES seem strange. Wild Malaysian elephants, grand creatures so much a

part of this country's natural heritage, are turning up in American,

European and mainland Chinese zoos and animal parks. Don't we want them?

 

Well, no, not if you judge by the pace of development that is wiping out

their habitat all over the country.

 

In a paper entitled Co-existence of Elephant and Human in the Lower

Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary presented earlier this year, Sabah Wildlife

Department forestry officer Titol Peter Malim estimates that there are 0.1

elephants per square kilometre in Sabah's lowland forest. Which means that,

at current rates of clearance, at least 15 elephants are losing their homes

annually, says the wildlife expert.

 

Sabah does have protected forests. But for these large animals, the

protected areas simply aren't big enough. Malim says that, to date,

elephants in Sabah are confined to a narrow bottleneck of a protected area.

Their food sources and movements are extremely restricted.

 

It is not surprising, then, that stories constantly crop up of elephants

raiding plantations and villages on the fringes of the protected areas, says

Sabah Wildlife's deputy director, Laurentius N. Ambu. Such raids can cause

extensive damage, with crop destruction in Sabah adding up to RM30,000 every

year. As a result of the raids, Malim says that in the period of 1970 to

1999, an average of five elephants were killed annually.

 

The department does make an effort to translocate elephants that have been

forced to invade human habitation. The animals used to be captured using

tame elephants, but this method has given way to tranquilliser darts.

 

" Under the 'in situ' programme, animals salvaged from land being cleared for

agriculture were translocated into protected areas. However, it is not

possible to translocate all animals into these protected areas when maximum

carrying capacity is reached, " explains Ambu. (Carrying capacity is the maxi

mum number in a species that can be supported in a given area.)

 

So how about keeping these " evicted " elephants in our own zoos? This

alternative, it seems, is costly - perhaps too costly for Malaysia.

Maintaining elephants in captivity costs an estimated RM4,650 a month per

animal, Sabah Wildlife says.

 

Well, with all these problems keeping our animals - alive - in the country,

perhaps it is a good idea to send them off to zoos and parks overseas. The

Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and

Flora (better known as Cites), which regulates the movement and trade of

protected flora and fauna, certainly doesn't seem to have a problem with

issuing permits to allow Sabah Wildlife to export wild elephants.

 

But the problem is, no one really knows what happens to these animals once

they are in foreign hands. And can we be sure that the demand for our

elephants will not cause authorities to switch from sending only animals

that have lost their habitat and begin capturing wild elephants for these

foreign zoos?

 

Already, international wildlife authorities have come across instances of

Bornean elephants being offered by dealers to Western zoos. And there are

rumours that these are " capture on demand " offers.

 

There does seem to be some discrepancy. Elephants have so far been sent to

the Oregon Zoo in Portland, the United States; Fukuyama Municipal, Japan;

Guangzhou Panyu Xiangjiang Safari Park, China; Chunju City Zoo, Korea; and

the Hanover Zoo, Germany. Elephants for Oregon and Germany were shipped in

1999, for South Korea and China last year, and for Japan in April this year.

What is odd is that Sabah Wildlife says these elephants were rounded up from

elephant-human conflict areas around four oil palm estates between Sept 15

and Nov 1 last year. So where did the department obtain the elephants for

the United States and Germany?

 

Questions regarding these elephants' origins e-mailed to Sabah Wildlife have

not really been answered. An answer did come, however, from the Oregon Zoo's

assistant director, Mike Keele. The American says that the zoo approached

the then director of the Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary in Sabah in 1999, Dr

Edwin Bosi, with an offer to house a female Asian elephant as a companion

for the Oregon Zoo's four-year-old male. In return, Sabah Wildlife received

some computer hardware and agreements on future assistance in wildlife

management. The Sabah elephant in Oregon is a female named Chendra and is

currently six years old. It was apparently found injured and separated from

its mother after being chased away from an oil palm plantation in 1999.

 

Okay, so she's not a wild elephant deliberately captured for the Oregon Zoo.

But there are other concerns about this zoo that is now keeping one of " our "

elephants: there was an unfortunate case last year of a keeper apparently

mistreating a young female Asian elephant. The zoo's elephant management and

care system is now under review.

 

And it's well known among international wildlife conservation organisations

that many zoos and safari parks in China have an unsavoury reputation. The

Xiangjiang Safari Park, however, is quite well run, says the Asian Animal

Protection Network, a non-profit organisation that tracks animal welfare and

other wildlife issues.

 

What the safari park plans to do with the 10 Sabah elephants it now has,

however, is not known. Queries e-mailed to park authorities have yet to be

answered, though this writer did glean one bit of information: they put on

an animal show with the elephants as one of the star attractions. It is not

known if this park has a captive breeding programme.

 

Is this the best we can do for Malaysia's elephants?

 

Perhaps not. According to Malim's paper, there are alternatives to elephant

management besides exporting them.

 

Take the problem of raiding elephants, for instance. Every wild elephant

that charges through a plantation or village costs the state plenty. But an

international wildlife expert (who wishes to remain anonymous) points out

that in other countries - and even on Peninsular Malaysia - it is the land

users who pay for conflict resolution and not the government.

 

Would developers here be willing to do this? Perhaps not. But there are

other ideas that can be explored, says Malim, such as insurance schemes to

compensate villages for gardens or crops damaged by elephants.

 

And part of the conflict resolution, he maintains, should be the

construction of electric fences on estates to minimise damage.

 

There's a downside to this, though: the animals might be redirected across

smallholdings whose owners can't afford fences -- and who might then take

matters into their own hands and kill raiding elephants (perhaps Malaysia

could follow India's successful example and use trenches to keep pachyderms

away).

 

To avoid a situation in which irate villagers kill elephants, the Areas

project -- the Asian Rhino and Elephant Action Strategy Programme begun last

year by the Sabah Wildlife Department and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)

Malaysia - recommends that stakeholders such as forest developers,

plantation owners, and land owners can allocate some part of their land to

form corridors for elephants and other animals to pass safely through.

 

Would they even consider this? Interestingly enough, the Areas project team

found from surveys that most affected farmers believe that elephants have a

right to live despite the damage they cause to the crops. But the belief is

a function of levels of income: more of the wealthier farmers believed

elephants should be protected than smaller, less well-to-do farmers.

 

" The authorities should adhere to a policy of retaining enough forest

corridors. Patterns of land development which isolate elephants from major

long-term conservation areas should be avoided, " explains Malim.

 

Easier said than done, for creating isolated pockets seems to be the exact

pattern of land use in Sabah so far. The planned 241,400ha Kalabakan Pulp

and Paper Mill and Plantation project in south-east Sabah is a case in

point. The proposed project site would have cut into a corridor between two

conservation areas, a corridor much used by elephants. Thankfully, public

protest has extracted a promise from the developers that they will provide a

corridor on their site. The bad news is that the very corridor promised by

the developers is in an area that has already been logged - and logged

before an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was done. In fact, the EIA

is still pending.

 

The prospects for keeping our animals instead of exporting do not look good,

do they? And there's worse to come, says Malim. Some take the view that

removing (or killing) elephants entirely from agricultural areas is a

reality that has to be accepted. This means, he points out, that unless

there is a major change in development policy, a massive reduction in

elephant population size is likely.

 

If people and elephants can't co-exist, then the need to preserve wild areas

in which the pachyderms can roam in peace without human intrusion is even

more urgent.

 

Malim's paper, for instance, points out that the Lower Kinabatangan area in

Sabah could be gazetted as a wildlife sanctuary. The area has been set aside

by Sabah's forestry department but its status has not been defined.

 

" Elephants were widely distributed in Kinabatangan but were exterminated. In

the early 1990s, habitat loss to development exterminated elephants from

many parts of the Kinabatangan region. "

 

But some herds still roam the area. It would be nice to know they will still

be wandering the area in our grandchildren's time rather than living in

zoos - and foreign zoos, to boot.