This photograph taken on October 13, 2024 exhibits veterinary assistant and mahout supervisor Sounthone Phitsamone slicing the nails of an elephant on the Elephant Conservation Middle (ECC) in Sainyabuli province in Laos. Agence France-Presse
SAINYABULI, Laos — Gradual and silent, former logging elephant Mae Khoun Nung emerges from a forest in northern Laos and follows her information to an animal hospital for a check-up.
As soon as ample within the forests of Laos, Asian elephants like her have been decimated by habitat destruction, grueling labour within the logging business, poaching and scarce breeding alternatives.
However conservationists are hoping DNA evaluation of elephants’ dung will assist them monitor each captive and wild tuskers, to allow them to safe a wholesome genetic pool and craft an efficient breeding plan to guard the species.
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Laos — as soon as proudly referred to as “Lane Xang” or “Land of a Million Elephants” — has between 500 and 1,000 of the animals left, simply one-third of the inhabitants twenty years in the past, in keeping with conservation group WWF-Laos.
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Round 10 elephants die every year for each one to 2 born, a charge that places the animals liable to dying out fully within the Southeast Asian nation.
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“The last word objective can be to safe a wholesome inhabitants of captive elephants to behave as a genetic reservoir if the wild inhabitants collapses,” wildlife biologist Anabel Lopez Perez informed AFP at her laboratory on the Elephant Conservation Middle (ECC) in Sainyabuli province.
As soon as researchers be taught what number of particular person elephants are within the nation — by testing DNA-containing cells in dung — Perez stated a breeding plan will assist them handle genetic variety, stop inbreeding and produce more healthy calves that may very well be launched into the wild to bolster the declining inhabitants.
Elephant hospital
On the hospital of the ECC, which shelters 28 elephants at its 500-hectare (1,200-acre) sanctuary, Mae Khoun Nung backs right into a tall metallic scaffolding construction, designed specifically for check-ups on the animals.
Sounthone Phitsamone, who manages the centre’s elephant keepers and acts as an assistant vet, faucets the animal’s leg and he or she calmly raises her foot for him to verify.
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Utilizing a knife, he slices out the cracks and gaps in her onerous, mud-baked nail.
Mae Khoun Nung spent her grownup life in logging operations till she was given to the ECC by her proprietor in 2014 after work dried up and it turned more and more troublesome to assist her.
Elephants like her as soon as roamed throughout a lot of Asia, however are actually restricted to lower than a fifth of their authentic vary, in keeping with WWF.
Their numbers within the wild have fallen by about half because the early 1900s, with solely 40,000 to 50,000 left, the group says.
Within the Nam Poui Nationwide Protected Space, researchers are actually traversing the rugged hills and forests, accumulating DNA from fecal samples of the world’s 50 to 60 remaining wild elephants.
WWF-Laos, which is collaborating with the ECC and the Smithsonian Establishment on the mission, stated the DNA evaluation from dung would permit researchers to determine particular person elephants, decide their intercourse, monitor their actions and perceive familial relationships inside herds.
“Though Nam Poui NPA represents a major habitat for one of many few giant wild elephant populations remaining in Laos, we lack exact information about its composition,” WWF-Laos stated in a press release to AFP.
Lowering numbers
In 2018, a authorities ban on unlawful logging — an business that used elephants to haul timber out of forests — resulted within the animals being despatched to work within the tourism sector, whereas others had been offered off to zoos, circuses and breeders.
The ECC tries to purchase and shelter captive elephants when they’re put up on the market, however since 2010, simply six pregnancies with three calves have resulted.
Lots of the elephants on the middle are of a sophisticated age and in poor form from years of arduous labour, Phitsamone informed AFP.
Mae Khoun Nung is 45 herself. On the financial institution of a reservoir, a brief stroll from the elephant hospital, she stops close to the water’s edge.
A small herd is diving below the floor and utilizing their trunks to spray their backs, however she grew up remoted from different elephants and has had issue socializing.
Bathing is one thing she prefers to do alone.
As an alternative, she turns to a pile of banana crops disregarded for the herd and crunches on a snack.
Phitsamone has labored on the elephant centre for greater than a decade and has no illusions about how troublesome it is going to be to avoid wasting his nation’s mild giants.
“If we examine Laos with different international locations, the variety of elephants within the database is small and is lowering,” he stated.
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“I don’t know if it is going to be OK in 20 or 30 years — who is aware of.”
