Bangkok's elephants beg for survival

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Sun, 20 Jun 2004 10:52:28 EDT

Animalara2003

AR-News: Bangkok's elephants beg for survival

ar-news

 

Sunday, June 20, 2004

 

 

It's not an uncommon sight in this city of 7.2 million to see an elephant and

its mahout, or trainer, come lumbering along, sometimes causing a traffic

jam. Elephants visit almost every major urban center in Thailand, including the

edges of sprawling Bangkok, begging for food.

The Asian elephant may still be a revered cultural icon in this country,

gracing bas-reliefs of temples and serving as the royal emblem of the monarchy,

but these days, it is woefully unemployed.

Worse, in a country whose civilization was more or less built on its back,

the elephant is fast disappearing. More than 100,000 existed at the beginning of

last century. At the beginning of the 21st, there were fewer than 5,000 --

2,000 of them still in the wild.

Now classified as an endangered species, the Asian elephant is expected to

disappear from the country altogether -- except perhaps in zoos and a few nature

reserves -- around 2050.

There are many reasons why Asian elephants are disappearing, but the main

culprit -- the scourge of all wildlife -- is deforestation. For domesticated

elephants, deforestation means that they no longer have jobs. Logging in

Thailand's forests have always relied on the power of powerful pachyderms.

 

full story:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/06/20/I

NG2976LBP1.DTL

 

 

 

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