Malaysian elephants fight losing battle for land

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Malaysian elephants fight losing battle for land

June 20, 2002

News

 

Mawar is like any other one year-old -- playful, loud and bright -- with one

exception. The chained baby jumbo will remain in captivity for the rest of

her life at Malaysia's training and rehabilitation centre for elephants.

 

Mawar's lifetime sentence was decreed on the day she was found, deserted and

half-starved, in an oil palm plantation on the fringes of Malaysia's biggest

forest reserve, after her herd had been scared off by hunters.

 

The doe-eyed tusker, whose name means " rose " , now spends most of her days

chained to a tree by an ankle, with barely two-feet of moving space, at what

is called the " Elephant Sanctuary " in the central state of Pahang.

 

Here, the one-metre tall jumbo, who wobbles to and fro to keep the blood

flowing in her stiff legs, will be tirelessly " rehabilitated " and trained

for one specific purpose -- to assist in relocating other wild elephants

encroaching on human property.

 

The process of relocation starts when a hungry pachyderm with not much

regard for land laws encroaches on private property and ends up being

tracked and trapped by wildlife authorities.

 

Two of the veteran " movers " , elephants Chek Mek and Mek Bunga, are then

called in to calm a trapped and tranquilised fellow elephant, and slowly

lead it onto a waiting truck before it is banished to another habitat where

conflict with humans or their property would be minimised.

 

But the centre's facilities are sorely wanting, and its four-legged

inhabitants are kept chained to trees for most of the day, although they are

allowed several hours of unbound freedom to roam around a three-and-half

acre (1.4 hectares) enclosed area.

 

As recently as two years ago they were kept tied to concrete slabs the whole

day, resulting in rotting sores and other health complications, said Lucy

Teh, chairman of the Elephant Appeal Fund, a non-profit organisation which

hopes to raise money for the centre.

 

" It's always the problem of funding, " said Lucy.

 

" We didn't have the money then to build an enclosed area so the elephants

could roam freely.

 

" We still can't afford to have them unchained around the clock, but it's

much better now, " she said, adding that government funds were still lacking.

 

Mawar may be slightly better off than her chained predecessors, but her

plight echoes the fate of the Asian elephants, who are finding themselves

increasingly forced into conflict with man due to depleting forest cover.

 

Conservationists believe the training centre and halfway house of sorts for

tuskers underlines a much bigger problem than just hungry elephants and

angry farmers, as not all situations of encroachment end with simply the

loss of revenue.

 

An Indonesian labourer was trampled to death this month when he got in the

way of a herd of wild elephants. Two weeks earlier a nomadic hunter was

killed when he was kicked in the head by an angry jumbo disturbed from its

sleep by his barking dog.

 

Authorities have since been on the hunt for the renegade elephants who will

be caught and relocated to protect them from the possibility of being shot

by unamused land owners.

 

" Whenever conflict like this occurs, large animals like tigers and elephants

will always lose out in terms of human interest, and they will constantly be

captured, shot, trapped, or given life sentences in zoo's, " said Dionysius

Sharma from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

 

Sharma said the failure of past land-use planners to look at the needs of

wildlife and the continued degradation of existing habitat would result in

more cases of large animals making their way into human territory.

 

" These animals need space, they need food, so when the forest can no longer

contain them, you will see tigers, elephants and rhinos popping up, " he told

AFP.

 

Sharma, who specialises in tiger conservation issues, warned that habitat

depletion and degradation was " much more critical now than it was before.

 

" I'm convinced that if we don't put in enough planning now, we will bear the

increasing cost of managing conflict, whether it's translocating elephants

or tigers.

 

" And it's not the poor farmer who's losing cattle who decided the land

plannning, but he is the one who bears the cost, and is on the receiving

end, " he said, citing red-tape and state policies as the main hindrance to

progress.

 

He said the government's emphasis had never been on biodiversity, or needs

of large animals, and stressed the urgency of preserving remaining wildlife

and their habitat.

 

Sharma said unless steps were taken to address the alarming drop in numbers

of wild Asian elephants, Mawar's story of conflict and captivity would be a

sadly repeated tale in the near future.

 

In 1995, a WWF report estimated the population of Asian elephants left in

the wild was between 35,000 to 50,000, with some 1,000 of them in Malaysia,

where Sharma said the number was dropping.

 

 

 

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