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 […]
Tag: Thailand
POLL: Should elephants be kept in captivity?
Water streams off the edges of her giant ears, runs in rivulets down the wrinkles of her slate-grey skin. She presses her whole head into the hose’s force, the spray welling into her mouth. As she drinks, she rubs her skin against the steel fence, her eyelids drooping luxuriously, her trunk relaxing. If ever I’ve […]
POLL: Should Asia’s elephant tourism be banned?
Businesses in Asia have often justified so-called elephant tourism by arguing that the industry benefits elephants and helps safeguard this endangered animal. But new research shows that elephant tourism is actually rife with cruelty. The survey, conducted by internationally recognized animal welfare group World Animal Protection, found that three out of every four elephants recorded […]
POLL: Should the use of elephants for “entertainment” be banned?
Thousands of elephants being used for entertainment across Asia are kept in cruel, abusive conditions fuelled by the growing tourism industry, World Animal Protection has found. Three out of four elephants surveyed in south-east Asia’s popular tourist destinations are living in harsh conditions where they are being used for rides, with mostly steel or wooden […]
Elephants Can’t Wait to Meet New Rescued Baby at Sanctuary
Rescuers are marveling over the heartwarming welcome a young orphaned elephant received after arriving at a sanctuary in Northern Thailand. According to the Elephant Nature Park, little Dok Geow became an orphan when he was just four-months-old and still dependent on his mother. Dok Geaw’s mother suffered from serious complications after giving birth that were […]
Video: Rare Indochinese tigers caught on camera in Thai jungle
The critically endangered Indochinese tiger has been found to be breeding in a Thai jungle, providing hope for a subspecies whose total population may number only a couple of hundred. Conservation authorities in Thailand, along with two international wildlife organisations, released photographs of new tiger cubs in the country’s east. The images support a scientific […]
POLL: Should Thailand’s illegal bird trade be stopped?
Thousands of birds are being sold — often illegally — in Thailand’s markets, a new study has found. On a single weekend in March 2015, researchers from TRAFFIC, the wildlife trademonitoring network, found a total of 117 species of birds on sale at the Chatuchak weekend market in Bangkok, Thailand. These included nine species listed […]
Hand-reared spoon-billed sandpiper spotted after flying quarter-way round the world
A rare hand-reared spoon-billed sandpiper has been spotted for the first time in the wild, more than 8,000km from where it was released. 25 of the critically endangered birds have been raised over two years by a conservation team from WWT and Birds Russia on the Russian tundra, before being released to join their wild-born […]