Volume 9, Number 25 Phnom Penh, December 8 - 21, 2000

Wild elephants slaughtered in Cardamoms

An elephant's skull among the skeletons found along the Areng river

By Michael Hayes

AT least six wild elephants - and possibly dozens more - have been killed by poachers in recent months in remote areas of the Cardamom Mountains, according to Government officials and wildlife experts.

The world's largest land mammals are being shot and butchered on the spot so that their tusks, trunks, tails, lungs and bones can be sold via an intricate black-market network of hunters, soldiers, ethnic Chinese traders and corrupt government officials, sources say.

"We've discovered three groups of elephant killers," said Sun Hean, Deputy Director of the Wildlife Protection Office (WPO), while he showed the Post pictures of bones which confirm the recent six killings.

Hean is unsure of the total number of wild elephants that have been slaughtered.

"Some people say 70, some say 50, but we aren't sure," he says.

Hean estimates that in the entire Cardamom region there are "not more than 200 elephants" left in the wild.

The discovery of the slain elephants has prompted the Government to respond urgently in an effort to stop the killings, which have possibly endangered the overall survival of the wild elephant population in the mountainous south-western region.

"If we are down to 200 elephants in the Cardamoms, that's pretty close to the minimum biologically viable population," says Hunter Weiler, Cat Action Treasury Project Officer, referring to an earlier study of wild elephants worldwide.

Weiler also notes that "given the best information available today in the absence of detailed field surveys" there are probably no more than 400 wild elephants left in the entire country. This includes several populations east of the Mekong in Rattanakiri and Mondulkiri and smaller numbers in Preah Vihear and Kampong Thom.

According to Hean, the WPO first learned of the elephant killings in one of its monthly reports submitted by WPO's Koh Kong office of the Community-Based Tiger Conservation Project (TCOP) at the end of September.

TCOP, an effort supported by the Save the Tiger Fund and the US Fish and Wildlife Service via the Cat Action Treasury, has an active team of ex-hunters who spend two weeks a month patrolling jungle areas to monitor the status of wildlife.

One "Wildlife Ranger" reporting from Koh Kong Province's T'mar Beng district said he'd seen scattered groups of elephant bones along the Areng river valley.

The WPO interviewed the ranger and sent him back to the field with a camera and global positioning system (GPS) to determine the exact locations of the killings. Information was also collected on who was perpetrating the crimes and how the elephant remains were being marketed.

According to Hean, the three groups of elephant killers include: one group of six, comprising two "unprofessional hunters", two district policemen and two other villagers, all from T'mar Beng; a second group of 15 soldiers, reportedly from a unit designated "E-83"; and a third group of three "unprofessional hunters".

WPO sent "negotiators" to contact the first group, and says they have now agreed to stop killing elephants, with the two leaders - Nat Vun and Kong Vuthy - having signed and thumb-printed contracts to that effect. To encourage the leaders to mend their errant ways, the WPO offered them jobs as TCOP rangers which includes a salary of $50 a month and training in wildlife protection.

Hean admits that guaranteeing that further killings of elephants won't take place is a difficult prospect.

"It's really hard to work with people in the forest," he says. "But now we have a legal way to get [Nat Vun and Kong Vuthy] to obey the law."

With the possible collusion of RCAF soldiers in the elephant poaching and with related reports that a senior T'mar Beng District official was involved in both illegal logging and the wildlife trade, the Ministry of Defense has become involved and is investigating the issue.

According to an informed source: "There is visible evidence of RCAF intervening to stop illegal logging in and around T'mar Beng. The removal of a known sawmill last month being but one example."

But the problem remained on what to do with the roughly 300 RCAF 5th Battalion soldiers in and around T'mar Beng, most of whom are paid only $20 a month - when they get it - plus a 20-kilogram monthly rice allotment, and who have much time on their hands to look for ways to secure additional income.

Wild animals and logs, conservationists note, are easy pickings for those with almost no money and days to kill.

Information collected by one conservationist following the issue indicates that a fresh elephant trunk used for some kind of medicinal soup which is alleged to enhance sexual potency sells locally for $300. Ivory tusks are going for $60 a kilogram and bones sell for $20 a kilo.

"We could stop this problem easily if we showered Asian cities with Viagra," the observer noted wryly.

With encouragement from several quarters, a meeting was held on December 5 at WPO attended by the Ministry of Defense (MoD) Vice Chief of the General Staff, General Chea Saran, Sun Hean and a Forest Crime Monitoring Unit official.

As a result of the meeting, the general gave a commitment that the 300 soldiers would be withdrawn from T'mar Beng by the end of December, a move considered by observers as critical to ending both poaching and illegal logging in the region.

"Yes, [MoD was] very cooperative," said Hean. "They agreed to take out the military [from T'mar Beng]. We have a clear commitment from them."

A major step forward in the struggle to save Cambodia's elephants? Possibly.

But analysts note that with increasing pressure on the Cardamoms from new logging roads, an influx of settlers and the difficulties in monitoring an area which covers over one million hectares, the future is uncertain.

"[The Government's efforts are] a dramatic step forward in stabilizing the current elephant population and maintaining it for the long-term," says Weiler, "but the elephants [in the Cardamoms] are still under siege."

Phnom Penh Post, Issue 9/25, December 8 - 21, 2000
© Michael Hayes, 2000. All rights revert to authors and artists on publication.
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