ASIAN ELEPHANTS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

ASIAN ELEPHANTS IN MYANMAR

in Bhamo

In Myanmar there still may be several thousand elephants. The animals there are one of the biggest question marks in Asian elephants conservation. Estimates range from 3,000 to 10,000 animals.

Myanmar is the home of a unique group of mangrove elephants but they are face bow facing extinction as their ecosystem disappears. In 2006 AP reported: “Elephants who once roamed the mangrove swamps of Myanmar’s vast Ayeyarwaddy Delta are headed for extinction, with only two of their number still alive, a local newspaper said. The two survivors live in the delta’s Meinmahla island wildlife sanctuary about 130 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of Yangon, the Flower News weekly newspaper said.

“These elephants are different from other wild elephants. Their toes are more delicate and they cannot survive in harsh terrain,” the paper said, quoting a forest ranger from the island sanctuary.A substantial number of wild elephants once roamed the mangrove swamps but the population fell to 27 by 1989, and to 14 by 1994. Ten of those 14 survivors were transferred to Ngaputaw, north of Meinmahla sanctuary in the Ayeyarwaddy Delta, but all perished due to their change in habitat and an overall degradation of the mangroves, the report said.

Myanmar has the world's largest herd of working elephants. Most of these 6,000 animals are used primarily for lifting in the teak timber industry. Af of the 1990s half the working elephants in Myanmar were the property of Myanmar Timber Enterprise, a logging operation controlled by Lt. Gen. Chit Swe, the minister of forestry. The country's other 3,000 privately-owned elephants mainly do free-lance work under MTE contracts. [Source: James P. Sterba in the Wall Street Journal]

In the early 1990s the generals of Myanmar asked for the help of Michael J. Schmidt, an animal veterinarian and elephant sexuality expert, to help boost the reproductive rates of elephant in Myanmar. About 100 elephants are born in captivity every year, not enough to make up for the elephants that die or can no longer work. Capturing elephants is increasingly difficult and expensive. Artificial insemination may be the last hope.

See Separate Articles on Elephants in Indian and Elephants in India

Websites and Resources: Save the Elephants savetheelephants.org; International Elephant Foundation elephantconservation.org; Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; BBC Earth bbcearth.com; A-Z-Animals.com a-z-animals.com; Live Science Animals livescience.com; Animal Info animalinfo.org ; World Wildlife Fund (WWF) worldwildlife.org the world’s largest independent conservation body; National Geographic National Geographic ; Endangered Animals (IUCN Red List of Threatened Species) iucnredlist.org

White Elephants in Myanmar

The royal families of Myanmar used to keep white elephants but the custom has largely died out. In the early 2000s a big deal was made about the discovery of a “white elephant” in the Rakhine area of Myanmar. The elephant wasn’t completely white. Its skin was reddish brown when dry and pale orange when wet. It was named Thiri Pissay Gaza Yaza (“Glorious Elephant King”).

Thiri Pissay Gaza Yaza was given a home in a gilded teak pavilion with an artificial waterfall anointed with water with remnants of gold, silver and gem stones in it. Not long afterwards another “white elephant” — this one with pale gray skin — was found. The Burmese were overjoyed with their good fortune of finding two auspicious symbols in such a short period of time.

According to the government-controlled press the “white elephants have emerged spring times when kings and governments rule the nation in accord with 10 kingly virtues...Emergence of the white elephant is a good omen at this time when the state is endeavoring to build a peaceful, modern and develop nation.” And then added “It is assumed that the nation will be peaceful, prosper and be totally free from all the dangers because of the white elephant.”

Huge crowds came to see the animals. One man told the New York Times, “It’s a strange thing to see. I like to see how its changes color when they throw water on it. ..I look at it and in my mind I make a wish.”

Asian Elephants and Logging in Myanmar

Elephants are still used in Burma to move teak logs. Drivers, called “oozies”, prepared their mounts with a pick-ax-like tool called a “choon”. If necessary the elephants can be transported from place to place in trucks or trailers pulled by trucks. Elephants used in illegal logging are sometimes brutally used.

Elephants are a good alternative to clear cutting because they can be used to select only the species of tree that are needed, they don't need roads and they can maneuver through all kind of terrain. Because elephants in Thailand may be out of work soon as the teak forests are depleted, I say transfer them to the Pacific northwest were they can used as alternative to the clear cutting used there.

Elephants are cheaper and most frailty than tractors and damaging forest roads. "Instead of hauling away heavy green logs with bulldozers and tractor skidders, which scar erosion-prone hillsides," wrote Sterba, Burma uses elephants to pull their lighter dried logs to rivers on which they float to staging areas for exporting processing." [Source: James P. Sterba in the Wall Street Journal]

Unemployed Elephants in Myanmar

in Bhamo

Jennie Rothenberg Gritz wrote in Smithsonian magazine: “Myanmar has a large population of semi-captive elephants, which have been living alongside humans since British colonial days, working in the timber industry. These days, logging bans have made their work scarce, and Myanmar isn’t quite sure what to do with the 5,000 or so elephants living in dozens of camps all over the country. They roam in the forests at night, and in the morning, they come back to camp for a morning bath. While they’re out at night, they can cause trouble: In a survey of 303 Myanmar farmers published last year, 38 percent indicated that they’d lost half or more of their crop fields to elephants in the preceding year. [Source: Jennie Rothenberg Gritz, Smithsonian magazine, April 2020]

To care for its elephants, Myanmar employs thousands of elephant keepers known as oozis — or, as they’re called in other Asian countries, mahouts. (Outside of Myanmar, most mahouts work at elephant sanctuaries, temples and other places where tourists come to see elephants.) It’s a profession that’s passed on from father to son. Starting in his teens, a boy will get to know a particular elephant — working with it every day, learning its body language and developing the skills to negotiate with it. (Negotiation is necessary. It’s hard to force an elephant to do something it really doesn’t want to do.) The elephants in the camps spend most of their days either restrained by chains near the mahouts’ homes, or with the mahouts themselves riding on their backs.

“Scientists in Myanmar rely heavily on local keepers to communicate with the elephants, almost like interpreters. “You can see the relationship,” says Peter Leimgruber, the head of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s Conservation Ecology Center. “You see some mahouts who don’t need to do much. You can see the person and the elephant working together in a beautiful way.”

Asian Elephants in Laos and Malaysia

There are between 200 and 500 wild elephants in Laos, mostly in the central and eastern parts of the country, and 1,000 to 1,300 domesticated elephants, used primarily in logging. Myanmar, Thailand and India have more Asian elephants but Laos has the most on a per capita basis (around 1 for every 4000 people). Laos still calls itself the Land of a Million Elephants. The royal families in Laos as well as in Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia used to keep white elephants but the custom has largely died out along with the power of the royal families. Elephants used to be on the Laos flag and were symbols of the Lao monarchy. The Communist removed them from the flag. The government held on to one royal white elephant until it died in the 1990s

symbol of Laos

Phapho is the elephant training region of Laos. Every family has one, they are sort of like the family car. As in Thailand elephants have traditionally been used to drag logs out of the forest.

Working elephants can be purchased for about the same price as new motorbike.

About 1,000 to 2,500 elephants live on Borneo. Near all so them are in the far norther part of the island in Sabah. It was long thought that these elephants were descendants of domesticated elephants that had escaped or been set free in the forest. But DNA indicates that are genetically different from other Asian elephants and had been on Borneo at least since the last Ice Age.

Asian elephants in Borneo are smaller than other Asian elephants and have larger ears and a more rounded body. They are very gentle creatures and known for not being aggressive around people.

Asian Elephants in Vietnam

In Vietnam, one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies after China, wild elephants numbered 81 in 2004, one estimate says. Vietnam’s elephant population has declined dramatically, falling from a maximum estimated population of 2,000 animals in 1980 to just 114 in 2000. The domesticated elephant population has similarly declined. In Dak Lak province, located in the Vietnamese Central Highlands near the Cambodian border, there were some 300 domesticated elephants in 1990; that number decreased to just 138 in 2000.

Wild elephants used to roam throughout much of southern and central Vietnam and domesticated ones were used in the lumber industry. In the Vietnam War the animals were sometimes pressed into service as porters and used to pack supplies. Elephants became bombing targets for U.S. planes. By the time the war ended the number of elephants in Vietnam had been dramatically reduced.

There have been many reports of elephant rampaging in villages in Vietnam, causing considerable damage. One conservationist told the New York Times, "It is sure sign that elephants are becoming confused, disoriented and desperate because of the logging and other human activity that's cutting into their ranges."

The destruction of habitat and poachers have brought the elephants of Vietnam to the brink of extinction. The Vietnamese agriculture ministry plans to set aside three regions for the protection of elephants, among them the Central Highlands, where elephants used to move supplies during the Vietnam War are now used in farming, tourism and festival parades.

Vietnam’s Last Elephant Hunter

Paul Spencer Sochaczewski wrote in the International Herald Tribune: Stardom can be defined in many ways. For Ama Kong it is a number, 298, the sum of wild elephants he has captured. Now 90, with failing eyesight but still with a healthy head of hair, Ama Kong is the Michael Jordan of elephant hunters. He is, by his accounts, the second most successful elephant hunter in the country (his late uncle, Ama Krong, holds the title, with 487 animals). Ama Kong has hobnobbed with royalty and government dignitaries. He proudly shows a nasty groin scar from a tusking — a badge of honor. [Source: Paul Spencer Sochaczewski, International Herald Tribune, December 23, 2005]

And Ama Kong has his own signature brand of medicinal wine, the Vietnamese equivalent of having a sneaker named after you. The gold lettering on the wine’s striking red box reads “Good for strengthening a man’s back and kidneys,” an Asian euphemism indicating that this is a powerful sex tonic.And Ama Kong is walking proof, having sired 21 children from four wives. The tonic might also explain his fine memory, since he is able to remember the names and birthdays of his spouses and offspring, including the youngest, a curious girl of seven named H’Bup Eban, who can’t resist clambering on to dad’s lap. But there are some things that even herbal tonics can’t fix — his upper teeth are bright, intact, and obviously false compared to the red rotting stumps of his lower teeth, destroyed by years of chewing betel.

Ama Kong is likely to be the last elephant hunter superstar, since the animals are protected by Vietnamese law, fewer young people learn the skills today, and most importantly, because there are far fewer elephants around to catch.

But how exactly do you capture a wild elephant? Moving slowly (when you’re 90 arthritis seeps in, even with the help of medicinal wine) Ama Kong demonstrates the procedure. First he blows on a trumpet made of buffalo horn to seek the support of the forest spirits. He then explains how he would go into the forest with several domesticated elephants (always an odd number of animals — odd numbers indicate male power; even numbers female) and look for a herd of wild pachyderms. The domestic elephants are Judas elephants, he explains, since they are able to mingle with the wild herd, even when mahouts sit atop their necks. The group tries to isolate a baby or juvenile (“easier to train than an adult” and a whole lot easier to catch). Using a kind of cowboy lasso technique, Ama Kong shows how he would catch the prey’s foot with a rattan loop attached to a long stick. The lasso was attached to a hundred meters of handmade leather rope made from water buffalo skin, and as the baby elephant ran it would get hopelessly entangled in the trees. The domesticated elephants would then take over and escort the kidnapped baby as far as possible from the wild herd. When the elephant hunters camped at night they lit fires and beat gongs to frighten away the wild animals which had come to rescue the crying infant.

Ama Kong has also captured eight rare white elephants, which he describes as being “like the French because they have yellow eyes and fair skin”. Because of the scarcity of white elephants and their importance in Buddhist cosmology, which in turn consolidates the power of kings, these animals brought him into contact with royalty from Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. In 1996, at the age of 81, Ama Kong captured his last elephant. This was five years after his hunting ground was made into a national park and elephants were declared a protected species. “It’s a shame the government won’t let us hunt anymore,” he says. “I’m still strong enough to lead a group of hunters into the forest.”

Visiting Elephant Country in Vietnam

Jim Christy wrote in Walrus Magazine, “I had to go to Yok Don Park to see these animals for myself. From Saigon I flew to the beach town of Nha Trang, then took a small bus to Buon Ma Thuot, the largest city in the Central Highlands. I sat in the back on rice bags, as the bus climbed up serpentine roads for five hours from the coast, through green hills covered with banana trees and into the highlands, where the plateaus looked as though they’d been covered with a camel-hair coat. The next day, I rode the remaining fifty-five kilometres to the village of Ban Don on the back of a motorbike. [Source: Jim Christy, Walrus Magazine, April/May 2004]

The people in Ban Don belong to the Ede and Mnong tribes. There are no more than twenty houses in the village and most of the men are elephant handlers, their main work being the domestication of the wild animals that have been relocated in the park — at least the ones deemed tameable. Walking around the village you can hardly help bumping, literally, into elephants that, just months before, had roamed free. I saw Vietnamese tourists climbing up on a work elephant to have their photos taken. The ranger in charge of the herd of killer elephants was a tall, lean, fierce-looking man who spat when I mentioned the tourists. When I asked him to lead me to the wild elephants, he told me, through the translator, that he thought I was a crazy old guy, but he eventually agreed.

Next day the ranger begged off, claiming he had to stay in bed to nurse a cold, so I set out for the jungle alone. Two fishermen took me across the Ea Krong river in a dugout canoe, and then I started walking. My directions were cursory: follow the trail until it narrows and branches off, then keep to the one on the right. The farther I walked, the denser the jungle became, but despite the presence of wildlife, there was not the humid, insect-laden oppressiveness of the Amazon. The trees were not as tall, the understory not as dense. I could see the sky at all times, blue as a baby’s blanket.

About eight kilometres in I came across a clearing where the ranger had set up a tent and stored his gear. He’d fashioned an enclosure of bamboo stakes plaited with hardwood saplings. Beyond the enclosure, several metres away, stood a young elephant, a male about two-and-a-half metres tall at the head. A thick iron cuff encompassed one ankle, and a chain linked the cuff to an auger in the ground. Its eyes were slivers of orbs. When I moved to my right, the animal’s left eye moved to follow me. Otherwise, it was motionless, taking me in. I thought of the eyes of the tamed animals back in the village — eyes that were unclear, as if covered by some veil of defeat. I thought of the beasts at the Saigon zoo, swaying their trunks back and forth in despair, back and forth. I stepped back from the enclosure and was turning away when the animal let out a bellow that shook the trees.

After walking another four kilometres, I came to a second clearing and was about to start back when I saw a full-grown elephant about a quarter of a mile away in a patch of second-growth forest that had probably been defoliated by the Americans during the war. I knew this had to be one of the killers, otherwise it wouldn’t be here. I stood still, watching him, remembering what a mahout in the village had told me: We don’t want to share our terrain with that which we fear, with something other than ourselves that can “think” and is dangerous. I watched the elephant until the picture of him in his wild state, the picture of him the way he is supposed to be, was burned into my brain to stay. Then I went back.

Asian Elephants in Indonesia

Elephants live dense forest on Sumatra and Borneo (mostly in Malaysian Borneo). The Asiatic elephant is indigenous to Indonesia's Sumatra island but are rarely seen here nowadays outside of logging sites or nature preserves. Domesticated elephants are occasionally used in logging or circus acts but many are unemployed or underemployed. Ones in Aceh found work after the tsunami towing damaged cars, moving debris and the like.

Sumatra's Riau province is home to the largest elephant population in Indonesia but the animals are coming under threat as the forests that once covered the province are disappearing. In the 1990s and 2000s the paper and palm oil industries have cut down 60 percent of the elephant’s habitat. Now just 10 percent of the remaining forest is suitable for elephants. Since 1985, the province's elephant population has plummeted to 350 from 1,600. About 80 elephants live within Tesso Nilo National Park.

Pygmy elephants, unique to Borneo island, are a distinct subspecies of mainland Asian elephants. They are considered endangered, with about 2,000 left in Sabah state. Adult pygmies stand up to 2.5 metres tall, 30-60cm shorter than other Asian elephants. They are more rotund and have smaller faces with longer tails that reach almost to the ground. They are less aggressive than their Asian cousins.

Asian Elephants in China

There are about 300 wild elephants in China. They were once were found as north as Beijing but over the centuries have seen their numbers decline and habitat shrink as result of wars, ivory hunting, the destruction of forests. The last remaining elephants are found in three separate areas squeezed into ever-shrinking habitats sandwiched between rubber plantations, tea farms, rice paddies, highways and development schemes.

Killing an elephant is a serious crime. In 1995, four people were executed for poaching elephants for their tusks, Since then no poaching cases have been reported although some elephants have been wounded by gunshots when they have wandered across borders to Myanmar and Laos.

A male elephant named Xiguang was captured along the Chinese-Myanmar border by drug smugglers in March 2005 using heroin-laced bananas to pacify the creature, The elephant continue to be fed the bananas and became addicted to heroin. Two months later Xiaguang was captured with six other elephants in southwest China and found to suffering from withdrawal,. He was sent for rehab in a protection center on Hainan Island and was cured of his addiction using daily methadone doses five time larger than those given to humans. In September 2008, the Chinese media reported, was cured oof his addiction after three years of rehabilitation and will return to his home.

China is the largest market for ivory. Much of the ivory from poached elephants in Africa is smuggled into China . Jewelry, chopsticks, and figures made from ivory are widely sold in souvenir shops in southern China. According to animal welfare groups, few Chinese realize that ivory comes from killed elephants.

In July 2008, CITES allowed China to import ivory from several African nations.

Elephants in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan

The most famous elephant herd in China is in Wild Elephant Valley park near Mengman in the Xishuangbanna region of southwest Yunnan near Laos and Myanmar. The elephants are a big tourist attraction but otherwise they have an uneasy relation with the human population there who put up with gobbled up crops, smashed greenhouses and even laundry pulled off of clotheslines by the elephants. [Source: Barbara Demick and Nicole Liu, Los Angeles Times, April 19, 2010]

In recent years helping the elephants has become a cause taken up by environmentalists and the government, with the latter doing things like providing compensation for crops damaged by elephants, paying villagers to collect data on the elephants and offering farmers micro-credit loans to raise tea which elephants don’t like over corn which they fancy. In large cities animal welfare groups have organized campaigns to encourage Chinese not to buy ivory and to inform them that ivory comes killed elephants. There is some discussion of setting up a captive breeding center for elephants like the one for pandas.

Officials in Yunnan Province announced the creation of “dinner halls” for wild elephants to prevent them from devouring crops and attacking villages. Seventy hectares of bananas and sugar cane have been raised on spare land away from villages in hopes that 300 wild elephants that live in the area will eat these crops and leave farmer’s crops alone.

On how locals view the elephants one villager told the Los Angeles Times, “The villagers get angry with the elephants, but there is nothing they can do about it. The elephants are protected by the government.” One elderly farmer told the Los Angeles Times, “I see them now more often than I did when I was growing up in the 1950s. Back then there was jungle everywhere and they seldom emerged.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; National Geographic, Live Science, Natural History magazine, David Attenborough books, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Discover magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Wikipedia, The Guardian, Top Secret Animal Attack Files website and various books and other publications.

Last updated December 2024