Tokyo woman, 77, leads charge to save elephants in Vietnam forest

Ethnic minority people and elephants have been living happily together like a family since back in the day in Vietnam's Yok Don National Park.

Elephants have been a great help for these people by carrying timber and doing farm work.

The biodiverse forest is also a home for wild elephants.

However, after the Vietnam War ended in 1975, many of the trees have been cut down to boost economic growth by harvesting timber.

Rampant elephant poaching for ivory is also threatening to wipe out one of the largest and most beautiful creatures on the planet.

A 77-year-old Japanese woman is inspiring local residents to protect the mammals.

“Destroying forests where elephants live will imperil human lives as well,"says Yoko Niimura, a former elementary school teacher who lives in Tokyo’s Kokubunji and has visited Vietnam since 2002 with the aim of protecting the elephants living in the Yok Don Forest.

Yok Don Forest, which straddles between Dak Lak province and Dak Nong province, is located in the heart of the nation.

It is believed that around 1,500 to 2,000 wild elephants lived in Dak Lak between 1975 to 1980, but the number had plunged to between 76 and 94 in 2004.

Niimura’s passion to protect elephants began after she encountered an elephant during a trip to Vietnam to take photographs after she had retired.

She was fascinated by the elephant striding strongly but calmly while carrying a mahout on its back.

She started taking photos of elephants and became aware of the harsh reality of the shrinking population of the animal, which have faced a risk of dying out.

She published a photo story book about the elephants in 2006 and established “Yok Don no Mori no kai,” a group to protect the creatures in the forest, in 2009.

The book was translated into Vietnamese by the group and 1,000 copies were donated to local children.

When she first set up the group to help the elephants, local people were not that bothered about their decline.

But now in the Yok Don Forest, an elephant conservation center has been established to protect elephants injured through poaching and to safeguard young elephants that have lost their parents.

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