Date: 95-11-13 08:52:31 EST
In clari.living.animals, C-reuters@clari.net (Reuter / Robert Evans)
wrote:


         GENEVA (Reuter) - The Asian elephant is under threat of
extinction as economic expansion brings it into greater conflict
with man, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said Thursday.
         A report by experts at the Swiss-based body said that only
35,000 to 50,000 of the species remained in mainly isolated
pockets. Millions of the beasts once ranged from Syria to China.
         ``Asian elephants are being devastated by human activities
which have destroyed huge tracts of their habitat and shrunk
their range to a tiny fragment of what it was 50 years ago,''
the WWF said.
         ``Unchecked logging, agricultural clearance and ill-planned
development have driven elephants from their forest home and
resulted in an unprecedented spate of conflict between humans
and elephants,'' it added.
         ``It will not survive without coordinated and concerted
efforts to save the species.''
         The report said the Asian elephant, which came originally
from Africa around 55 million years ago, had been largely
forgotten as conservation efforts focused on the plight of its
larger cousin in Africa.
         The African elephant, which is the target of widespread
poaching for the ivory trade, is also in decline but there are
10 times more of them than their Asian counterpart.
         Unlike the African elephant, which is spread across much of
the southern half of the continent, the Asian population of the
animal was highly fragmented into relatively small groups,
putting their potential for long-term survival more at risk.
         The report said half of the total estimated population was
in India, where, despite the historic reverence for the animal
embodied by the elephant-faced Hindu god Ganesh, ivory poaching
was on the increase.
         Poaching centered on males, because unlike African elephants
Asian females do not grow tusks, and was severely damaging the
sex ratio, increasing the population decline especially in
southern India, WWF specialist Elizabeth Kemf said.
         Forest clearance was disrupting traditional elephant
migration routes and leading to violent clashes with people when
hungry elephants raided crops. In an average year, 300 people
died in such incidents in India alone.
         In Vietnam, the elephant population had declined by 75
percent over the last 25 years to between 300 and 400.
         In China, where a widespread population had been reduced to
between 150 and 300 elephants, government protection measures
have been stepped up, the WWF said.
         As the report was released, the official New China news
agency reported in Beijing that four men, including a policeman,
had been executed in the southern province of Yunnan for killing
elephants and for taking part in the illegal ivory trade.
         But Kemf told Reuters the trade, underpinned by a continuing
demand for traditional medicines that has decimated Asian tiger
as well as elephant populations, appeared to be channelled more
through Burma, Laos and Cambodia.
         In these three states, none of which are signatories to the
1975 United Nations CITES convention on endangered species,
protection for wildlife was minimal, the report said.