MYANMAR-YANGON-ELEPHANT IVORY AND WILDLIFE PARTS-DESTRUCTION

YANGON, March 3, 2019 - Confiscated wildlife parts to be destroyed are seen during the destruction ceremony of confiscated elephant ivory and wildlife parts to commemorate World Wildlife Day at Yangon Zoological Garden compound in Yangon, Myanmar, March 3, 2019.

A forest officer shows an elephant tusk to be destroyed during the destruction ceremony of confiscated elephant ivory and wildlife parts to commemorate World Wildlife Day at Yangon Zoological Garden compound in Yangon, Myanmar, March 3, 2019.

Please credit and share this article with others using this link:
https://www.prokerala.com/news/photos/myanmar-yangon-elephant-ivory-and-wildlife-parts-destruction-535676.html

Raids reveal Myanmar poachers’ indiscriminate bloodthirst

A series of targeted raids by Forestry Department agents on Tuesday ended with the arrest of six poachers Mandalay, Ayeyawady, and Bago regions and the seizure of a vast array of wildlife products. The diversity of the haul offered a glimpse into the voracious bloodthirst of Myanmar poachers and their customers.

Among the seized items were elephant hides, antlers of numerous deer species, bison horns, turtle shells and flesh, porcupine quills, bear bones, claws, and paws, and skulls of a variety of wild animals.

“Due to the market demands of neighboring countries, there are many people storing and trading these [wildlife parts],” Ayeyawady Region Forestry Department director Khin Maung Myint, told the Myanmar Times. He explained that one facility that was raided in his jurisdiction was used for making decorative hangings, jewelry and accessories, and traditional medicines out of animal skins and other parts.

The six suspects have been charged under Myanmar’s Protection of Wildlife and Protected Areas Law, which carries a prison sentence of up to five years for the killing or wounding of a protected animal.


Research from the last year has showed a spike in elephant killings as demand for elephant skin has risen across the region. Whereas ecological damage from the ivory trade has been limited by regulations in China and by its specific targeting of elephants with tusks, elephant skin hunters are indiscriminate in their killings, and skin products, which often lose their resemblance to natural elephant skin after they are processed, are more difficult to detect.



Myanmar’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation reported last year that poachers in Myanmar kill one elephant every week. If the killing continues at the same rate, the country’s elephant population could be extinct within a few years.


Please credit and share this article with others using this link:
https://coconuts.co/yangon/news/raids-reveal-myanmar-poachers-indiscriminate-bloodthirst/

In a disturbing new trend, poachers are killing Myanmar’s elephants for their skin, teeth, and tails

In a disturbing and growing new trend, Asian elephants of all ages are being slaughtered in Myanmar for their skin and other body parts. Elephant poaching rates since January have already surpassed the annual average for the country—in a country that has less than 2,000 wild Asian elephants, this is a frightening uptick that requires immediate action to ensure their survival.

An astounding 110 elephants have been reported killed since 2013, primarily in the Bago Yoma and Ayeyarwady Delta where armed conflict and a lack of law enforcement make the terrain more accessible to poachers. At this rate, wild elephants could vanish from these two key areas of Myanmar in only one or two years.

“Asian elephants are already facing tremendous challenges across their range,” said WWF’s Nilanga Jayasinghe, senior program officer for Asian species. “Adding to those is this new trend that we are seeing in Myanmar of herds being indiscriminately poached for their skin. It is extremely alarming. We must act now to protect them!”

An emerging new threat
There are fewer than 50,000 Asian elephants left in the wild, and fewer than 2,000 in Myanmar. For decades, they’ve faced the threats of habitat loss, human-elephant conflict, and, to a lesser extent, poaching. But poaching for body parts other than tusks (only male Asian elephants grow tusks, and only 1% of male elephants in Myanmar have tusks) is on the rise.

Elephant skin is sold dried and is mixed with other ingredients to make topical creams for dry skin conditions, and consumed as medicine for stomach ailments. The skin is also polished into beads and sold as lucky charm bracelets, while tail hairs are put into silver rings and worn for luck. Elephant teeth are ground down into a powder which is used on the face to reduce spots and inflammation. Most markets selling elephant products sit along the border regions of China, Laos, and Thailand, but there’s also a demand in Myanmar.

We can help protect Myanmar’s wild elephants
Right now, there are no anti-poaching patrols in the Bago Yoma and Ayeyarwady Delta regions. That’s why WWF is launching an emergency action plan to train, equip, and deploy 10 anti-poaching teams to the most vulnerable areas, and implementing a thorough plan to stop the slaughter.

Please credit and share this article with others using this link:http://animals.gimbot.xyz/in-a-disturbing-new-trend-poachers-are-killing-myanmars-elephants-for-their-skin-teeth-and-tails/

Myanmar rebel group recovers ‘sacred’ elephant tusks stolen from Thai village

The Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), an insurgent group operating in Myanmar along the Thai border, handed over a pair of carved elephant tusks to Thai authorities today, ending a hunt that started on Friday.

The elaborately engraved tusks vanished from a pavilion in a Kayin village in Thailand’s Umphang district on Friday. Leaders of the village suspected a former village head named Baisu Khiridujjinda, who had come to the village and asked to sleep in the pavilion the night before the tusks went missing. They accused him of stealing the tusks and fleeing across the border to Myanmar’s Kayin State.

Within the next couple days, the DKBA located Baisu and the tusks in a newly opened monastery on top of Mount Mulayit in Kayin State, about 80 kilometers from the Thai border. Baisu had reportedly become a hermit and planned to use the sacred tusks to attract disciples, The Nation reported.


A 10-member team led by the chief of Umphang district travelled to the Thai-Myanmar border on Monday to retrieve the tusks from the DKBA. However, the insurgent group did not hand over Baisu, who remains at large in Myanmar.

A source on the Thai recovery team told The Nation that Baisu denied stealing the tusks, saying he had only borrowed them long enough to “perform a ritual” at the mountain-top monastery.

The source also said Baisu’s alleged theft might have had backing from armed groups in Myanmar, since the tusks came from a male elephant named Kwang Phu that was born on Mount Mulayit more than 200 years ago and taken to what is now Thailand by a Kayin mahout.

The stolen tusks are one of two pairs of tusks kept in the village pavilion in Umphang district there that are considered sacred by locals.

Please credit and share this article with others using this link:https://coconuts.co/yangon/news/myanmar-rebel-group-recovers-sacred-elephant-tusks-stolen-thai-village/

Ivory tusk smuggler caught again

KOTA KINABALU: Indonesian authorities have finally caught up with a woman who was detained and let go in Kalimantan on Jan 13, despite being found with ivory tusks believed to be from poached Borneo Pygmy elephants in Sabah.

According to officials, the 37-year-old Indonesian woman, who had been living in Sabah, was arrested upon her return to Nunukan via the state’s border town of Tawau at about 10pm on May 3.

A Kalimantan wildlife official, Subhan, said the woman was currently held at the Nunukan prison while the five ivory tusks earlier seized from her was in the safekeeping of the Natural Resource Conservation Centre in Samarinda, East Kalimantan.

She is being investigated for smuggling ivory from Sabah to Nunukan.

Subhan said that under the country’s Conservation of Biological and Natural Resources law, the woman now faced up to five years in prison and a fine of 100mil Rupiah.

The tusks were found on her days after reports emerged of three elephants, including a rare sabre-tusked animal whose rescue from a Tawau plantation in August was featured in newspapers, were found killed in Sabah.

To read the full article, click on the story title

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.

To read the full article, click on the story title