Vietnam Slow to Make Costly Effort to Save Elephant Herds
12/26/99
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Vietnam slow to make costly effort to save herds
Source: San Jose Mercury News via Mercury News Vietnam Bureau
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: December 26, 1999
Byline: MARK MCDONALD
TAN PHU, Vietnam -- The forest was so thick with bamboo and banyan
trees that even at midday their canopy kept the forest dark. But now
it was nearly midnight and the young Viet Cong guerrilla had to duck
low under a dark tangle of branches that hung over the trail he was
patrolling.
He went a few more yards, heard a noise and looked back. The branches
were actually an elephant that had been straddling the path.
He had just ducked under its stomach.
Phan Trung Kien had seen ethnic minority tribesmen using elephants to
haul ammunition and weapons for the Viet Cong, but he had never before
seen an elephant in the wild. Scared the hell out of him, he said.
That was 30 years ago, and Kien is now a soldier-turned-bureaucrat.
As head of the agricultural and rural development department of
Dong Nai province, Kien is one of the officials presiding over the
demise of the wild elephant in Vietnam.
``The elephants are facing extinction in Vietnam,'' said Frank
Momberg, program manager with the British conservation group Fauna and
Flora International. ``We need to take some action now or we will see
no wild elephants within a few years. The local authorities are making
decisions about development without any environmental concern.''
Huge groups of wild Asian elephants used to roam throughout
Vietnam, and just 10 years ago there were an estimated 2,000
nationwide. Now, Momberg said, the total population is probably about
100.
``I would have to agree that the elephants are becoming extinct,''
Kien said.
Here in Dong Nai province, a group of 60 or so elephants known as the
Tanh Linh Herd regularly moved from the Tan Phu forest, across the La
Nga (Ivory) River and into neighboring Binh Thuan province.
In 1993, while on forest-fire watch in Tan Phu, forest ranger Nguyen
Qui Duc saw the herd, 11 elephants in all, moving under his fire
tower. ``I was very excited and very scared,'' he said. ``But since
that time I have seen only two elephants.''
The word ``herd'' hardly applies any longer. Momberg said the Tanh
Linh group numbers only five now. With so few members, the group would
have to interbreed and thus is no longer ``genetically viable.''
And only a handful of wild elephants exist elsewhere in Vietnam,
Momberg said. As he pointed to places on a map where elephants had
been spotted, he said glumly, ``Two here, three here, maybe two here,
just one here.''
Even though he plans to conduct an elephant census in some remote
areas of Dak Lak and Gia Lai provinces in the spring, he does not
allow himself to indulge in the use of the word ``herd.''
Killing an elephant is not against the law in Vietnam (except inside a
national forest), and poaching for their ivory has contributed to
their decline. Government biologist Trinh Viet Cuong estimated that as
many as 1,500 elephants were killed by poachers between 1990 and '92.
Indeed, most of the remaining wild elephants in Vietnam are tuskless,
the ones with tusks already having been killed. Shops all over Vietnam
openly advertise and sell ivory trinkets, jewelry and carvings.
Vietnam's population boom also has driven the elephants closer to
extinction. Half the forest that once made up the natural range of the
Tanh Linh Herd has been rapaciously logged and destroyed, turned from
a forest habitat into residential areas, farmland or coffee and cashew
plantations. An estimated 30,000 people have settled in the area in
recent years.
``We can't move the people, it would cost too much money,'' said Kien.
``If we want to keep the elephants in the Tan Phu forest, we need
electric fence, and that costs money, too.''
It doesn't help that the elephants, in search of food, water and new
mates, move from one province to another. The two provincial forestry
departments of Dong Nai and Binh Thuan don't cooperate, don't share
rangers and have never drafted a mutual conservation plan.
``There isn't any planning,'' said Momberg. ``None.''
The deputy director of the Tan Phu forest, Nguyen Sy Chuc, admitted
that he and his staff are overmatched and underqualified. ``We have no
elephant experts,'' he said.
Meanwhile, reports continue of elephants killing farmers, poachers and
illegal loggers. Six people have been killed by elephants this year,
and a Tan Phu man remains in serious condition with a fractured skull
after a recent elephant attack.
Authorities have warned rural people to store their food -- and
especially their salt -- away from their homes. When elephants attack
homes, they are hungry for salt, and they also like the bamboo ash
from cooking fires.
Terrified villagers have devised trenches, traps and other methods to
scare off elephants, including hand-made shotguns and flame-throwers.
``All this has turned this (Tanh Linh) group very aggressive,''
Momberg said. ``When they see people in the fields, they rampage. So
people hate the elephants now. They ruin the crops and kill their
relatives.''
The national government says it's interested in saving the wild
elephants, but there's little money to establish a suitable preserve,
no viable plans in the works and Fauna and Flora International is the
only conservation group doing any elephant work in Vietnam. Momberg
said a preserve would cost $600,000 a year to maintain, an
astronomical sum for a poor country like Vietnam.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Phan Van Khai has been getting chain letters
and e-mail messages from animal-rights groups in the United States,
letters that demand a suitable preserve for the elephants.
``It's a matter of national pride,'' Momberg said. ``The Vietnamese
don't want to be exposed internationally for letting the elephants go
extinct.''
Containment is costly and practically impossible, and the government
hasn't shown much interest in relocation since a botched 1993 attempt
to relocate the Tanh Linh group of 13 elephants. A so-called expert
from Singapore was hired to direct the project, but he was trampled to
death while trying to shoot one of the elephants with a tranquilizer
dart.
``The whole thing was a total disaster,'' said Momberg.
Twelve of the 13 elephants eventually died, and the lone survivor was
packed off to the Saigon Zoo.
How to help: Fauna and Flora International, Indochina Program Office,
IPO Box 78, 104B Pho Hue, Hanoi, Vietnam. Phone: (84-4) 943-2292. Fax:
943-2254. E-mail: fmomberg.ffi@fpt.vn.