Vietnam resumes plan to relocate killer elephants
Copyright 2001 Associated Press
November 22, 2001
HANOI, Vietnam - Vietnam has resumed efforts to relocate a herd of killer elephants after adopting new precautions prompted by the deaths last week of two tranquilized animals, an official said Thursday.
The wild elephants have killed 12 people in central Binh Thuan province over the past three years.
Officials decided not to shoot the elephants with tranquilizer darts near the steep rocky hills where the two elephants died last week, apparently after falling, said Nguyen Xuan Nhi, head of Binh Thuan provincial Forest Protection Bureau. They also agreed that only one elephant would be tranquilized at a time, giving the team of Vietnamese and Malaysian experts a chance to properly revive the animal with another drug, and that the captured elephants would be placed in cages as quickly as possible, he said.
Nhi said the experts spotted the elephants Wednesday but did not shoot them with tranquilizers because they were near the hills.
The government is spending 3.5 billion dong, or $233,000, and conservation group Fauna and Flora International is providing $60,000 to pay for the eight Malaysian experts to relocate the herd of elephants to York Don National Park in the Central Highland province of Daklak bordering Cambodia.
Twenty-one soldiers have been provided to protect the team and the elephants when they are tranquilized, Nhi said.
Officials earlier said one of the tranquilized elephants may have died last week after being angered by approaching local photographers and reporters.
Officials say five to six elephants remain in the herd.
Vietnam has an estimated 70 to 100 wild elephants, down from 1,500 to 2,000 after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.
The wild elephant population has dropped because of ivory hunting and deforestation. The remaining elephants have become increasingly aggressive in recent years because of their shrinking habitat.
In 1993, Vietnam hired a team of experts from Singapore to relocate wild elephants from the southern province of Dong Nai to Daklak, but the results were disastrous.
One Singapore expert was killed by an elephant, and all 12 of the elephants died from overdoses of tranquilizers or from jumping to their deaths from moving trucks.