Fundraising event to help elephants

The French embassy in Cambodia will be hosting a charity concert at the end of April to aid the conservation of elephants in Cambodia.

The event entitled “Mothership” is scheduled for April 27. Participants are expected to donate between $50 to $2,000 for attending the fundraiser.

Ken Sereyrotha, WCS’ country program director, said that this charity event is a positive point for the conservation of elephants in Cambodia.

He said that the fundraiser is aimed at directly educating the general public about elephant habitats, diets and reproduction.

He said that elephants in Cambodia are under threat due to economic development, including the allocation of land for agro-industry farming.

“Animals depend on nature, but humans add disruptive factors such as development that affects all species in the wild, not just elephants,” he said. “This case requires human intervention because elephants need large sanctuaries and they migrate from shelter to shelter to find food.”

He added that elephants are intelligent migratory creatures that will move in order to find a secure shelter with plenty of food and safety.

Pierra-Yves Clais, vice president of the Airavata Elephant Conservation Project in Rattanakiri province, created the event because he needs more funding to improve a project in Katieng forest.

He said that the funds are to be aimed at financing veterinarians as well as other social projects.

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A Whole Family Of Elephants And Their Babies Were Trapped In The Mud For Hours

At the end of March, an incredible rescue mission took place in the sanctuary of Keo Seima Wildlife in Cambodia. An entire family of Asian elephants found themselves suddenly trapped in a huge dam of mud, reports The Dodo.

The huge hole, normally used by local farmers to store water, had been transformed into a sticky, muddy pool which could have taken the lives of this elephant family as they were unable to get out.

As soon as the farmers found the animals in the mud trap, they contacted the Minister of Environmental Affairs, who then contacted the associations, Elephant Livelihood Initiative Environment (ELIE), and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Cambodia. The volunteers rushed to the scene and found the family completely exhausted and in grave danger.

 They gave food and water to the three adult and eight baby elephants to help them regain their strength before commencing the rescue mission. They started to water the elephants down to refresh them, and also to thin out the thick, sticky mud.

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Community Rallies To Free Elephant Herd Trapped In Muddy Bomb Crater

Eleven have been saved from ghastly deaths in the tanks to the collaboration of local villagers and wildlife conservation groups.

People living near in bomb had originally created, the In more recent years, the local community has been using the crater to store water.

The herd had apparently become stuck in the muddy pit, unable to scale the steep sides, when they wandered in to drink and bathe, By the time the local farmers spotted them on Sunday, it was clear they had been there for some time

“They obviously had been in there at least a couple of days … because the little baby was very exhausted and the mud was so sticky,” Jemma Bullock of told Cambodia Daily. She added that the elephants would likely have soon died from exhaustion had people not intervened.

The people who saw the elephants contacted the provincial environmental department, which brought in representatives from ELIE, the , the , and to help. Staff from those groups teamed up numerous people from the local community to dig into the side of the crater and construct a makeshift ramp for the herd.

Video footage of the rescue shows the elephants making their way up the ramp and walking free. While 10 of them escaped this way, the final elephant — a young one weakened by the ordeal, had to be lifted out using ropes. Tan Setha of WCS told LiveScience that the deaths of the entire herd ― which included three adult females and eight juveniles — would have seriously hindered conservation efforts in the sanctuary.

“These elephants represent an important part of the breeding population in Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary, and their loss would have been a major blow to conservation,” he said.

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Villagers rescue 11 elephants in Cambodia

Farmers in Cambodia found 11 Asian elephants trapped in a mud hole — an old bomb crater from the Vietnam War that the farmers had enlarged to store water.

The 10-foot walls in the hole in Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary were too high for the elephants to scale and, as the mud dried, it became increasingly more difficult for the herd to escape.

The farmers contacted the Department of the Environment, and employees there reached out to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Elephant Livelihood Initiative Environment (ELIE) for help.

Villagers worked with the team to help bring food and water to the elephants while a ramp was built and lowered into the hole.

"This involved a massive effort of digging a ramp and escape channel, loading in branches and logs and roughage and cooling them down with a big hose and to also loosen the mud around them, before they finally moved toward the exit," Jemma Bullock of ELIE wrote on Facebook.

"Finally ... one after the other they stormed out of there. However more drama struck when one little baby was left behind. So the rescue mission launched back into action. As a huge storm rolled in, we attempted to rope the baby ele to safety. After many attempts and some heart stopping moments, the little gal finally made it out and ran off to the safety of the forest and the herd!"

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Sambo the Elephant Celebrates 53rd Birthday in New Home

Sambo, the elephant who was an institution on Phnom Penh’s streets for much of the past three decades, celebrated her birthday on Sunday on a patch of land in Sen Sok district that recently became her home.

About 30 people gathered for the event, where Sambo was feted with piles of fruit and a birthday cake. She trundled through the crowd, grabbing fruit with her trunk and wearing a jasmine necklace as well as a banner that read “Happy 53th Birthday Sambo!”

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“Wildlife Trafficking Can’t be Eradicated Just by ‘Nice, Nice’ Campaigns”

Suwanna Gauntlett, founder and CEO of Wildlife Alliance, likes to call herself “a direct action conservationist.” For over three decades now, Gauntlett has been working on the frontlines of efforts to protect endangered species and forests across the world.

Born in San Francisco and raised in Brazil and Europe, she has worked on a diverse range of conservation efforts — from fighting to protect dolphins from drift nets in the South Pacific, to saving the Amur (Siberian) Tiger population in the Russian far east (where she worked with Global Survival Network to bring the tiger population back from only 80 individuals in 1994 to nearly 400 by 2000), to helping reverse the steep decline of Olive Ridley turtles along the eastern coast of India. For the past decade, Gauntlett has been based in Cambodia where she has been leading a sustained effort, in collaboration with Cambodian Government, to curb illegal wildlife trade and consumption.

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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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