WHILE most media attention is focused on the African elephant in terms of the poaching crisis and the ivory trade, Asian elephants are also very much under severe threat.
One species in particular, the Sumatran elephant, a sub-species of the Asian elephant, has been reclassified by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) to Critically Endangered on its Red Data List.
The natural habitat of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the sixth largest in the world, is being systematically destroyed by forest clearing for palm oil plantations and illegal logging, while the elephants are being poached for their ivory and are increasingly coming into conflict with villagers because of their shrinking habitat.
Numbers of the Sumatran elephant are estimated to be under 2,000.*
Meanwhile, for the first time in decades the Karen State in north eastern Burma has been opened up for scientists to study this relatively untouched wildlife sanctuary.
The area has been off limits because of ongoing conflict between Karen rebels and the Burmese military.
Scientists have surveyed the area and have recorded 31 species of mammals, more than half of which are Near Threatened, Vulnerable or Endangered according to the IUCN’s Red Data List.
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They include the tiger, elephants, various species of monkey and the Indo-Chinese leopard.
Other species seen are bears, wild boars and various antelopes.
The wildlife survived because of conservation action by the Karen people themselves and the fact that the fighting tended to concentrate in and around human settlements.*
Staying in Burma, the country’s shrinking wild elephant population is reported to be under increasing poaching pressure because of a new fad in oriental traditional medicine.
It’s believed that elephant hide, burnt to ashes then mixed with coconut oil and rubbed on eczema, will cure the disease.
Elephant hide is being sold openly for about R75 for a tiny slice.
Also being sold openly for traditional medicine is ground up ivory for curing teenage skin problems, as well as tiger teeth and other tiger parts, snake skins, porcupine quills, pangolin scales, clouded leopard skins and so-called bear oil.*
Over the border in neighbouring China, Asiatic black bears are kept in crush cages with drainage tubes inserted surgically in their gall bladders.
They are ‘milked’ for several months at a time, with time in between to recover.
Each bear, and there are hundreds of bears on each of hundreds of farms, produces a little over 2kg of bile a year.
The bile is dried and sold for traditional medicine, not just in China, but in other Asian countries too, including Japan. It is thought to cure liver disease, among other things.
Despite the farms, bears are still poached in the wild, including in countries like the United States, for their gall bladders.**
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PS: There are three sub-species of Asian elephants. Apart from the Sumatran one, the elephants of Sri Lanka are another sub-species and the third is the elephant found on the Asian mainland, being the Indian sub-continent, South East Asia and China.***
*Save the Elephants News Service. **National Geographic magazine. ***The New Encyclopedia of Mammals, editor David MacDonald, Oxford University Press, 2001.
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