MekongEye-July 17
Time is running out for the few wild elephants left in Vietnam, as plans to save them are still being made. A trail of enormous footprints, crisscrossing slabs of cracked concrete, lead to a battered ranger station in Vietnam’s Pu Mat National Park. Park staff say the wild Asian elephant that left the tracks is as friendly as it is lonely.
Separated from the country’s remaining wild herds, the solitary giant satisfies her social appetite by interacting with people at the station. Rangers say the 29-year-old female has been alone since her mother died more than a decade ago. “The elephant usually comes here to play,” said Nguyen Cong Thanh, a ranger at Pu Mat in Vietnam’s north-central Nghe An province, as he pointed out the damage. But the wild elephant herd that lives deeper in the park’s forests – a group of about 15 individuals – is far less friendly, he said. Only about 100 wild elephants are estimated to survive in Vietnam, separated into 22 herds across the country. These last survivors of Asia’s once 100,000-strong elephant population face a stampede of threats – including often-violent conflict with people – made worse by habitat loss. Drawn to fruit trees, corn, rice and other produce, a herd of wild elephants can destroy a farmer’s livelihood in a single meal. When Vietnam’s remaining wild herds interact with humans, the results are sometimes fatal. As pressure mounts from agricultural expansion and other human development, conservationists warn the dwindling number of elephants will soon approach the point of no return in sustaining a viable population. With Vietnam’s elephant populations trailing on the very edge of sustainability, each incident of conflict threatens the future existence of the species in the country. Asian elephants are listed as critically endangered on the Vietnam Red Book of rare and endangered species, while the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List categorizes the species as endangered at the global level. Read more at:
https://www.mekongeye.com/2023/07/17/vietnam-last-elephants/
