malaysian elephants sent to foreign zoos

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No room left to roam - The Star-14.8.01 The writer is S. S Yoga.

 

Wild Malaysian elephants are turning up in American, European and mainland

Chinese zoos and animal parks. Development is wiping out their habitat all

over the country. Sabah Wildlife Department forestry officer 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. Sabah does have protected forests but for

these large animals, the protected areas aren't big enough.

In the period of 1970 to 1999, an average of five elephants were killed

annually for raiding crops. The department does make an effort to

translocate elephants that have been forced to invade human habitation.

However, it is not possible to translocate all elephants into the protected

areas when the maximum carrying capacity is reached. Keeping these evicted

elephants in our own zoos is costly - an estimated RM4 650 a month is needed

per animal. A better idea is to send them off to zoos and parks overseas.

CITES certainly doesn't seem to have a problem with issuing permits to

allow Sabah Wildlife to export wild elephants.

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, United States; Fukuyama Municipal, Japan;

Guangzhoou Panyu Xiangjing 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 US and Germany? Questions regarding these elephants' origins emailed to

Sabah Wildlife have not really been answered. An answer did come from the

Oregon Zoo's assistant director, Mike Keels. The Americans says that the zoo

approached the then director of the Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary in Sabah in

l999, 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 which was

apparently found injured and separated from its mother after being chased

from an oil palm plantation in 1999. But there are other concerns about

this zoo that is now keeping out 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 that many zoos and safari parks in China have an unsavoury

reputation.

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

As for the Malaysian sun bear, the American Zoo and Aquarium Association,

the Sun Bear Species Survival Plan group, the New York based Wildlife

Conservation Society, the Sabah Wildlife Department and Sabah's Sepilok

Orang Utan Sanctuary decided that the sun bears needed help to survive so

they formulated a plan to place the animals in breeding programmes within

North American zoos. Most of the bears placed in foreign zoos were

non-releasable into the wild. The programme with the American zoos is a

precursor for a sun bear breeding programme in Sabah. The Sepilok supervisor

and Sabah Wildlife director were sent to the United States to research the

latest techniques for reintroducing bears and dealing with problem bears.

They also looked at holding areas and exhibit design techniques in

preparation for a new zoo in Sabah. The zoo has yet to materialise, but

there are efforts underway to set it up at Lukawi, 25km from Kota Kinabalu.

 

 

 

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