BURMESE ELEPHANTS FOR COLOGNE ZOO

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http://www.irrawaddy.org/aviewer.asp?a=5040 & z=148

Two Burmese Elephants Depart for German Zoo

 

Monday, October 03, 2005

 

Two 12-year-old female elephants from Myanmar [burma] Zoological Garden, Shu

Thuzar and Aye Chan May, left for Germany’s Cologne Zoo accompanied by their

keepers on a chartered plane last Tuesday in exchange for a pair of white

rhinoceroses and three lions, the local weekly The Myanmar Times said. Cologne

Zoo proposed the exchange because it wanted to increase its Asian elephant

population with elephants from outside Europe, it quoted deputy director of

Cologne Zoological Garden Olaf Behlert as saying.

The Rangoon zoo will receive a breeding pair of white rhinoceroses because the

only white rhinoceros currently at the zoo is getting old, the newspaper said. A

male and two female lions from the Cologne Zoo will also be exchanged. All the

animals are listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered

Species, the report said.

Under the exchange program, some attendants from Burma will attend a basic

animal management course at the Cologne Zoo in mid-2006. Specialists from

Cologne will also travel to Burma to provide training. (AP)