The Elephant Project Collaborates With Government Of Myanmar To Save Endangered Elephants Throughout The Nation

The Elephant Project recently announced that it has entered into an unprecedented agreement with the Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar to relocate elephants from high human-elephant conflict areas to safe zones around the country.

“Helping to end human-elephant conflicts in Myanmar is the first step in our long-term commitment to Myanmar’s elephants,” The Elephant Project Founder and President Dane Waters said in a statement. “We are extremely optimistic that The Elephant Project, working together with the Government of Myanmar, will help ensure that the nation’s elephants will survive, and that our joint efforts will serve as a strong testament to what public-private partnerships can accomplish.”

U Win Naing Thaw, Director of the Nature and Wildlife Conservation Division, Forest Department Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation of The Republic of the Union of Myanmar also believes that by working with The Elephant Project, they will find a long-term solution to protecting Myanmar’s critically threatened elephant population.

As per the agreement, the Forest Department and The Elephant Project will identify the animals that need relocation to mutually agreed upon areas while ensuring the health and safety of the elephants.

The collaboration, noted U Win Aung, The Elephant Project’s Myanmar based Advisory Board member, “will save countless elephants in Myanmar which are on the run for survival due to deforestation and poaching.”

In addition to the relocation efforts in Myanmar, The Elephant Project is also funding the building of electric fences in the country that will help keep elephants out of the crops of local villagers. This preventive measure reduces the chance that villagers, whose livelihoods are threatened by elephants searching for food, will either kill the elephants themselves or call in poachers to do it for them.

As part of The Elephant Project’s long-term commitment to the country, the organization plans to establish an elephant sanctuary or sanctuaries in Myanmar dedicated to domestic elephant protection and long-term care.

To underwrite the costs of operating the sanctuary in perpetuity, The Elephant Project will develop significant residential and commercial real estate investment opportunities in the country. This development will be located adjacent to the sanctuary and permit non-intrusive viewing of elephants for “ecotourism” and “voluntourism”.

This unprecedented effort will inject hundreds of millions of dollars into the Myanmar economy, creating a perpetual and powerful funding source for the sanctuary established to protect the country’s elephant population. It is a win for the government, donors, the Burmese people, and most importantly the elephants.

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Saving Giants in Myanmar

While Nomi Prins is best known as the author of books such as Jacked, Other People’s Money, It Takes a Pillage, and, coming May 2018, Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World, she is also a devoted animal conservationist and member of the advisory board of The Elephant Project, a nonprofit charitable organization dedicated to preserving Myanmar’s timber elephants. The Santa Barbara Independent caught up with Prins ahead of The Elephant Project’s fundraiser on November 9.

How did you become involved in The Elephant Project? For as long as I can remember, I’ve been interested in animal conservation. As a teenager, I passed out leaflets in Grand Central Station to save dolphins from tuna nets. A few years ago, I joined the board of Born Free U.S.A. and worked on the campaign that sought an end to the use of elephants in circuses. That experience led me to this project.

What is the scope of the threat to Burmese elephants? One threat is the overall political and economic situation in Myanmar, one of the poorest nations in Asia. Poaching, loss of habitat, and the use of elephants in illicit logging are the major threats. Our focus is on saving some 3,000 elephants that are owned by the government timber entity and then loaned on a subsidized basis to handlers. As the government phases out the subsidies, the squeeze is put on the handlers. The elephants, obviously through no fault of their own, are caught between these forces.

Talk about how the project’s financial structure differs from donor-based funding. A big challenge is to create a framework that is economically sustainable, that has a reliable flow of funding to keep the conservation and education work going but also mitigates the very real impact of removing elephants from the economic chain. That’s key. The initial focus is raising money through fundraising so we can identify and secure land that can be used as [elephant] sanctuaries, and then collaborate with other local groups to build facilities for ecotourism and other revenue-generating activities. The goal is to reach a place where a protected elephant has more value than a dead one.

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Myanmar introduces elephant protection plan

Myanmar is stepping up efforts to protect its elephants with a new conservation project following a dramatic rise in poaching in recent years, officials said Thursday.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (MONREC) has finalized an elephant conservation plan -- the first such scheme for Myanmar, which has the world’s second largest Asian elephant population after India.

“The Myanmar Elephant Conservation Action Plan is very important to support the long-term survival of Myanmar’s elephants,” said Environment Minister Ohn Win said in a statement.

The plan includes legislation against killing elephants and a proposal to establish a registry of wild and domesticated elephants. It outlines ten-year priorities to safeguard the animals, including enlisting public help in controlling poaching and the trade in elephants and their parts.

According to government statistics, 133 elephants have been lost in Myanmar over the last seven years, including 61 to poachers. Last year saw the loss of 25 elephants.

“The urgency now for elephant conservation action is due to increasing killing for the illegal trade in ivory and parts,” Ohn Win said.

Around 2,000 wild Asian elephants and 6,000 used in the timber industry are under increased threat from poaching for ivory, elephant skin and other parts, as well as the capture of elephants for the live trade, the U.S-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said.

Simon Hedges, elephant coordinator with WCS, said the plan -- developed in collaboration with eight government departments and international conservation agencies -- is a significant achievement towards securing the future of Asian elephants in Myanmar.

“Habitat loss, poaching and human-elephant conflict are pressing threats to elephant conservation in Myanmar,” he said in a statement.

British non-profit EleAid group says poaching for ivory, meat and other parts is on a small scale in Myanmar. “However, poaching to capture elephant calves is known to be commonplace,” according to the organization’s website.

“The mother and often other members of the herd will fight to protect the calf and the hunters frequently resort to killing them. The calves are then smuggled in to Thailand for work in the tourist industry.”

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