Conservationists look to CSI for elephant counts

Christopher Shay, Phnom Penh Post
April 7, 2009

A technique allowing scientists to ‘fingerprint' elephant DNA from dung samples has revolutionised animal censuses.

WILDLIFE conservationists have no idea how many wild elephants there are in Cambodia, but as DNA analysis becomes more affordable, conservationists are turning to the same techniques used by crime laboratories to determine Cambodia's wild elephant population. The main difference from forensic detectives is that conservationists gather their evidence from fresh elephant dung.

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), WWF and Fauna and Flora International (FFI) are all using "fecal DNA capture-recapture surveys", a simple and accurate method to calculate the elephant population that avoids the need to disturb elephants or put humans at risk.

The Forestry Administration and conservation groups send trackers to places where elephants are thought to congregate, but instead of looking for the animals themselves, they collect 1-cubic-centimetre samples of elephant dung and place them in a preservative, which are then sent to labs in Australia or the US.

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Tigers, Elephants Returning to War-Torn Cambodia Forest

Stefan Lovgren, National Geographic News

May 27, 2008

For years wildlife poacher Lean Kha had prowled the war-ravaged forests of Mondulkiri Province in eastern Cambodia looking for meat.

A former teenage soldier for the Khmer Rouge political party, he estimates that he killed a thousand animals, including ten tigers, after the fall of the brutal Pol Pot regime in 1979.

Once dubbed the "Serengeti of Asia," almost all of Mondulkiri's wildlife was wiped out by poachers during decades of conflict, which began with the war in neighboring Vietnam. (See a Cambodia map.)

Now, with Cambodia finally at peace, small but growing populations of animals—including Indochinese tigers, Asian elephants, and critically endangered species such as the giant ibis—are returning to one of Southeast Asia's last remaining dry forests

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Suspects in Elephant's Death Arrested

Associated Press

March 25, 2008

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Two Cambodian men have been arrested for allegedly poisoning an elephant and sawing off its tusks to sell on the black market, officials said Wednesday.

The male elephant, which was chained to a tree by its owner in Rattanakiri province, about 200 miles northeast of the capital Phnom Penh, was found dead in March 2007.

Police at the time said the alleged killers had doused jack fruit, a tropical fruit eaten by elephants, with rat poison.

The tusks of the 62-year-old elephant, measuring almost 3 feet each, had been removed.

The two suspects, Men Rattana, 42, and Klem Sam Ouen, 27, were arrested this week, almost a year after the animal's killing, said Hor Ang, the provincial deputy police chief.

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DNA key in dung deal to save Cambodian elephants

Chee Chee Leung, The Age August 3, 2007 IT'S a big job but someone's got to do it. Melbourne scientists are to run DNA tests on elephant dung sent from Cambodia to help work out numbers and monitor wild populations in the formerly war-torn nation. Rangers have collected almost 600 elephant dung samples from the Cardamom Mountains in the country's south-west, a former stronghold of the Khmer Rouge. The specimens have been packed in test tubes and are due to arrive next month in Melbourne, where they will be analysed by biologists at Wantirna laboratory DNA Solutions. Elephant biologist Joe Heffernan said getting a more accurate picture of population size would help conservationists work out how many elephants were being poached. Mr Heffernan, from conservation group Fauna & Flora, which is leading the project, said it was surprisingly difficult to count elephants in the wild. Despite their size, they can silently "disappear" into forests, and a person can be within metres of one without even knowing it. For the full story click on the blog title

Elephant's Tusks Stolen for Black Market

The Associated Press

March 27, 2007

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Thieves in Cambodia poisoned a 62-year-old domesticated elephant and sawed off its tusks to sell on the black market, officials said Tuesday.

The male elephant was found dead Saturday, where its owner had left the animal chained to a tree near his home in Rattanakiri province, said Lee Sam Ol, a district police chief.

Police found several empty packs of poison commonly used to kill rats near the dead elephant. They believe the thieves had doused jack fruit, a tropical fruit eaten by elephants, with the poison, Lee Sam Ol said.

The elephant's tusks, measuring nearly 3 feet long each, had been removed, he said.

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Wildlife return to Ho Chi Minh Trail

The Age
March 6, 2007
Four decades after US warplanes plastered it with bombs, a remote corner of the old Ho Chi Minh Trail in Cambodia is making a comeback as a treasure trove of endangered wildlife.
Tigers prowl imperiously down tracks where weapons-laden North Vietnamese trucks once rolled. Elephants shepherd their young past giant bomb craters to drink at jungle water holes, and rare apes call from treetops that used to hide communist forces from American pilots.
Much of the credit for this swords-into-plowshares story goes to the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, which has managed and protected this forest in southern Mondulkiri Province since 2002, in partnership with the Cambodian government. A former free-fire zone is now a strictly policed no-hunting preserve.
"It's quite moving, I guess," says Ed Pollard, the society's technical adviser, standing in the dappled light beneath a canopy deep inside the jungle.
"Only 30 years ago this was a hotbed. There were arms coming along this trail around this area and now it's all overgrown and it seems like this untouched wilderness. In what used to be a cauldron of war, we've now got tigers and elephants and bears trotting backward and forward almost unmolested."
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