Elephant donated to Dak Lak conservation centre

A tourism company in the central highlands has given an elephant to Dak Lak Province’s Centre for Elephant Conservation.

Director of Dak Lak Centre for Elephant Conservation Huynh Trung Luan confirmed on December 1 that they received a 55-year-old elephant named H’Blu from Phuong Nam Eco-tourism Company.

The female elephant has been given a health check-up before it was donated to the centre.

A centre representative said they also wanted to adopt two other elephants that are being raised by a household in Gia Lai Province and a tourism firm in Khanh Hoa Province.

“There are several individual elephants living in different provinces. We hope the households and firms that are raising those elephants will let us adopt them and give them a better living environment,” Luan said.

The number of elephant in Dak Lak Province has declined greatly. In 1980, the province has 502 elephants. But today has only has 45 elephants left, including H’Blu. About 19 domesticated elephants are over 40 years old and cannot breed anymore.

Elephant preservation work in Dak Lak has faced various difficulties. A domesticated elephant in Dak Lak gave birth to a baby on October 8, but the baby elephant soon died.

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Wild and tame elephants in Đắk Lắk’s clash for food

There have been at least five clashes recently between wild elephants in search of food and tame elephants in the Central Highlands province of Đắk Lắk’s Buôn Đôn District.

Most recently, on Monday, a herd with seven wild elephants attacked and injured two tame elephants at Forest Management Station No. 6 in Yok Đôn National Forest.

Huỳnh Trung Luân, director of the provincial Elephant Preservation Centre, said on Thursday that statistics with the centre from March till date shows the five conflicts occurred as wild elephants have been coming closer to human inhabitations such as forest management stations and local residents’ fields in search of food. So far, seven tame elephants have been injured, and one has died.

Luân said this problem is the result of the decline in forest area; wild elephants move towards inhabitations as they cannot find sufficient food in the forests. Another reason is that when wild male elephants are in rut, they are very violent and they attack the tame male elephants to get access to the females.

To reduce such conflicts, the centre has asked the tame elephants’ owners and tourism businesses using tame elephants to take steps to protect their elephants better, and not let their elephants wander into areas where wild elephants are typically spotted. Also, the tame elephants should not be chained in the forest in the evening, instead they should be brought home and protected, Luân said.
If there are such conflicts, residents should report the incident to the centre or local authorities who can step in and drive away the wild herds safely.

In the past few decades, the number of tame elephants in Đắk Lắk has seen a serious decline, from 502 in 1980 to the current 43. The main reason for this is that the number of tame elephants that bear a calf is few. At present, one female elephant is pregnant and expected to deliver next month, a positive sign as this is the first time in 30 years that a tame elephant in the province will bear a calf.
The Đắk Lắk Elephant Preservation Centre has joined hands with foreign experts to create conducive conditions for female elephants to bear calves.

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