Two Elephant Poachers Detained in Chaungtha Forest Reserve

Two suspected poachers were detained by a combined team of authorities after an elephant carcass and weapons used for poaching were discovered in Chaungtha Forest Reserve near Ngwesaung Beach, Pathein Township in Irrawaddy Region on Sunday afternoon.

After receiving a tip-off about an elephant carcass, authorities questioned two suspects from Thitphyu Village, leading to the discovery of the carcass and weapons used in hunting the elephant.

“We have detained two suspected poachers and seized the elephant carcass, its removed skin, firearms and poisoned arrows. Four people were involved in the poaching but two of them managed to escape. The police are trying to arrest the escapees. The Forest Department will formally charge them for poaching,” Police Lieutenant Colonel Khin Maung Latt told the Irrawaddy.

The combined team of the local police, forest rangers and officials from the Forestry Department detained the two suspected poachers, Ko Htwe, known as Thaung Aye, and Nga Du, known as Chit Min Naing, together with two firearms, arrows, bottles of poison, gunpowder, knives, axes, elephant skin and flesh.

“Local people reported to the authorities that they had discovered an elephant carcass. When the team arrived at the village, the carcass had already been hidden. So, the team questioned the two suspected poachers who lived nearest to the scene. The two admitted poaching the elephant and showed the police the carcass, its skin and weapons,” said Dr. Lin Lin Tun, leader of a local elephant conservation group.

The two suspected poachers have been detained at Ngwesaung Police Station and will be charged under Section 37 (a) of the Protection of Wildlife Act.

Poachers killed about 40 wild elephants, which were searching for food in Pathein, Ngapudaw and Thabaung during the period from 2011 to 2017, according to the Pathein Township Police Force.

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Asian Elephants Are Now Being Killed For Their Skin

The smell was ghastly and the sight even worse. Twenty-five elephants lay dead in a riverbed in the Ayeyawady (Irrawaddy) delta in southwestern Myanmar. “The stench is what led villagers to the bodies in the first place,” says Aung Myo Chit, the Smithsonian Institution’s Myanmar country coordinator, who also leads a local NGO, Growth for Prosperity, that helps rural residents avoid deadly conflicts with elephants.

It was the trust Aung Myo Chit’s outreach workers had earned that led villagers of Nga Pu Taw Township to reveal the dead elephants. Ordinarily, local people avoid reporting poaching to the authorities for fear they’ll be blamed.

By the time Aung Myo Chit’s filmmaker colleague Klaus Reisinger got there in early May, the giant carcasses had deteriorated badly. “Their bellies were bloated,” Reisinger recalls with a shudder.

Captive elephants are often used to drag carcasses of elephants slain for their ivory out of riverbeds where they’re commonly found. But that wasn’t possible this time. The skin had been stripped from the bodies, leaving them to tear apart if moved. So staff with the Myanmar Forest Department who came to investigate burned them in place to prevent their contaminating the downstream water supply.

Such spectacles are familiar on African savannas, where elephants are more numerous and poachers have stalked their ivory for decades. Not so in the thick forests of Myanmar, where the country’s remaining 1,200 to 1,400 endangered wild elephants are elusive and only the males (and not all males) have tusks.

But this and other, smaller recent slaughters in the Ayeyawady delta were not ivory raids. Poachers had killed males, tuskless females, and calves alike in pursuit of a different prize: their skins.

To read the full article, click on the story title

ASIAN ELEPHANTS ARE NOW BEING KILLED FOR THEIR SKIN

A lawless zone in northeastern Myanmar has cornered the market in a gruesome good: elephant skin jewellery.

The smell was ghastly and the sight even worse. Twenty-five elephants lay dead in a riverbed in the Ayeyawady (Irrawaddy) delta in southwestern Myanmar. “The stench is what led villagers to the bodies in the first place,” says Aung Myo Chit, the Smithsonian Institution’s Myanmar country coordinator, who also leads a local NGO, Growth for Prosperity, that helps rural residents avoid deadly conflicts with elephants.

It was the trust Aung Myo Chit’s outreach workers had earned that led villagers of Nga Pu Taw Township to reveal the dead elephants. Ordinarily, local people avoid reporting poaching to the authorities for fear they’ll be blamed.

By the time Aung Myo Chit’s filmmaker colleague Klaus Reisinger got there in early May, the giant carcasses had deteriorated badly. “Their bellies were bloated,” Reisinger recalls with a shudder.

Captive elephants are often used to drag carcasses of elephants slain for their ivory out of riverbeds where they’re commonly found. But that wasn’t possible this time. The skin had been stripped from the bodies, leaving them to tear apart if moved. So staff with the Myanmar Forest Department who came to investigate burned them in place to prevent their contaminating the downstream water supply.

Such spectacles are familiar on African savannas, where elephants are more numerous and poachers have stalked their ivory for decades. Not so in the thick forests of Myanmar, where the country’s remaining 1,200 to 1,400 endangered wild elephants are elusive and only the males (and not all males) have tusks.

But this and other, smaller recent slaughters in the Ayeyawady delta were not ivory raids. Poachers had killed males, tuskless females, and calves alike in pursuit of a different prize: their skins.

Using elephant skin and other body parts is nothing new in Southeast Asia. In Myanmar and elsewhere—particularly in tribal areas—the skin is dried, ground, mixed with oils, and applied to treat eczema and other skin conditions.

To read the full article, click on the story title

Captive elephants in Burma may be released to boost numbers

Hundreds of unemployed elephants in Burma, laid off from the once-booming timber trade, have emerged as potential saviours of the animal population.

One of the largest surviving wild elephant populations in Asia is being pushed to the brink as hunters feed demand for their hides in neighbouring China. Dozens of carcasses, stripped of their skins, have been found by villagers in recent months.

Campaigners have warned that hunters are increasingly targeting mothers and their calves, which will accelerate the slide in elephant numbers. In many cases, the poachers have used poisoned arrows to bring down their quarry, causing a slow, painful death.

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The fight against elephant poaching in Pegu Range

HAUNG SAUK VILLAGE, Pegu Range – The residents of Chaung Sauk, a village in the foothills of the Pegu Range, recalled the shock they felt last November when the giant carcass of a male elephant, stripped of its tusks and skin, was found bobbing in Sar Ngan Stream, about one kilometre upstream of their village.

“The elephant’s body drifted in the creek near our village. We then reported it to village authorities and the police station,” said Kyaw Hlaing Win, the village tract administrator.

The area in northern Rangoon Division’s Okkan Township has long been a place where farmers reside in close proximity to elephants, who live in the nearby forested mountains and occasionally come down to forage on vegetation and crops in the foothills.

During the past year, the area has increasingly become a place for poachers to hunt elephants, and villagers believe several elephants were killed, though only one carcass was found. “Elephant poachers have been spotted near our village since February last year. They set up bamboo huts at the base of the Bago [Pegu] Yoma and first were searching for tortoise eggs,” said Kyaw Hlaing Win.

Police have attempted to arrest the poaching ring, but were only able to apprehend some local villagers, including the previous village administrator, who helped poachers move around the area.

“Those arrested were not the poachers, but just their helpers and guides in the forest,” Kyaw Hlaing Win said, adding that he suspected ringleaders slipped away because of collusion with local authorities. “I don’t believe authorities didn’t know that poachers had entered the area with the help of the former village administrator,” he said.

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