Nghe An struggles to deal with wild elephant preservation

Farmers in the central province of Nghe An are worried about wild elephants which have
returned to nd foods at their elds over the last couple of days. A group of wild elephants
from Pu Mat National Forest come to eat sugar cane in Anh Son District, Nghe An Province
in March, 2014. Photo by NTV On November 3, a group of five elephants from Pu Mat

National Forest arrived in Bai Da Village in Anh Son District and damaged a cajeput field.
Local people have had to hang out lights to the cornfields
and around their homes to chase
the animals. To prevent wild elephants from residential areas, a five-kilometre
fence was
installed two years ago but this did not help much. “The village is big and the elephants are
still coming from other directions,” the village’s head, Nguyen Van Chau, said. “Elephants
often come at the end of the year which is also the harvest season of sugar cane and other
crops.” According to a local man, Nguyen Van Thanh, 48, the wild elephants have appeared in
his village every year for over the past 10 years and are becoming fiercer.
“Before we only
needed the gongs and lights to chase them away,” Thanh said. “But now it seems that they
are not afraid of such things anymore. They even attack us.” Explaining for the elephants
becoming fiercer,
director of the Pu Mat National Forest, Tran Xuan Cuong, said that many
areas in Anh Son District used to…

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