|
|
| |
|
Best veiw with
Firefox 3
|
|
|
Dead Elephant Stats
These poor creatures are running for their lives from our diseases for
more. We need to stop breeding like rats. Wake up, buy less. Want less.
 |
FACTBOX: Threats facing endangered wild elephants
20 March 2008 - By Gillian Murdoch - Reuters.com
March 20 (Reuters) -- Almost 200 elephants were
killed in Sri Lanka in 2007, with the vast majority shot by
farmers and others angered when the wild animals stray out of
jungles and forests into human areas to search for food.
Here are some facts about Asia's wild elephants and the threats
facing them, listed by estimated population size:
* INDIA: 23,900-32,900. Home to 60 percent of Asia's elephants,
India has the highest death rate from human-elephant conflict, with
200-250 people and 100 elephants killed annually. Habitat
fragmentation, poaching of tusked males, and patchy forest law
enforcement are problems, but numbers are rebounding.
* MYANMAR: 3,000-4,000. Most large herds live in forested hills by
the borders with Bangladesh, India, China, and Thailand. Wild
capture was banned in 1994, but captives are still taken to join
4,500 working elephants in logging camps.
* THAILAND: 3,000-3,700. Numbers dropped sharply with human
population growth and forest clearances. Legal ivory sales
from captive elephants allegedly lets dealers 'launder' illegal
ivory.
* SRI LANKA: Conservationists say 2,100-3,000, wildlife officials
3,000-4,000. The stars of many local festivals, herds have been
pushed to the southwest of the island due to intense conflict over
crops, and blown up by landmines. About 193 elephants died in
1997, the vast majority were shot.
* INDONESIA: 1,180-1,557 Sumatra. No Borneo estimate. Rapid forest
conversions has hit Sumatran and Bornean elephants hard. From 1985,
hundreds were taken to Sumatran 'Elephant Training Centres' to stop
conflict. Many died. Intense conflict remains.
* MALAYSIA: 1,250-1,466 Peninsula and 1,100-1,600 Borneo. Hundreds
have been removed to national parks since the 1970s, to stop raids
on plantations as jungles were cleared. Translocation has ensured
healthy elephant populations.
* LAOS: 780-1,200. Known as the Land of a Million Elephants, herds
suffer hunting and habitat loss from logging, agriculture and
hydroelectric projects. Lack of funds hampers conservation.
* BHUTAN: 400-600. Confined to southern plains and foothills
elephants are mostly seasonal migrants, crossing to Bhutan to escape
India's monsoons, and migrating back to India in summer.
* CAMBODIA: 250-600. Elephants helped build ancient Angkor Wat, but
also hunted for ivory and meat, blown up by land mines in the civil
war and killed for raiding crops. Relatively good habitat makes them
better placed than others for a recovery.
* CHINA: 200-250. Small but viable herds live in southern Yunnan
province. Numbers are rising, thanks to reproduction and immigration
of Laos herds. China is also a large illegal manufacturer and
trader of ivory, mostly from African elephants.
* BANGLADESH: 196-227. The human population explosion sparked
intense competition for land and conflicts with elephants, which now
live only in isolated areas. A lack of active conservation projects
makes Bangladesh's elephants highly threatened.
* NEPAL: 100-170. Many roam between India and Nepal, where rapidly
rising human populations devastated lowland forest herds. Small
herds have stabilised in protected reserves.
* VIETNAM: 76-94. Hunting, forest clearances and warfare that saw
forests bombed and poisoned with Agent Orange
and other defoliants, made elephants functionally extinct.
Conservationists hope inviable herds
will cross to Cambodia and Laos.
Sources: Reuters, Interview with Professor Raman Sukumar, Centre for
Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, EleAid Web Site
(http://www.eleaid.com)
(Writing by Gillian Murdoch, Singapore Editorial Reference Unit)
|
|
|
The
The
Labors in the Spirits of
Science
Living on the Lost Planet 
