Central farmers lose crops to elephants

Thanh Nien News
August 4, 2008
Seven members of Y Ngo’s family in the central province of Dak Lak depend on one hectare of farmland.
But their farm is all but destroyed, damaged by severe drought and wild elephants.
“The area they trample destroys 10 times more than what they eat and there is no way rice can survive being stepped on by elephants,” said Ngo, a farmer in Ba Na Village of Ia J’loi Commune in the province’s Ea Sup District.
For the past two weeks the 82 households of seven ethnic minority groups in Ba Na Village have been disturbed, usually at night, by wild elephants from a nearby forest that come and trample their farmland.
The farmers can only make noise – from a safe distance – to try to shoo the elephants away.
But this tactic stopped working after only a few days.

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