New Delhi (AsiaNews/Agencies) - Elephants are at risk of disappearing from entire countries in Asia, because of ruthless hunting by farmers who are defending their fields. All over, rapid deforestation and the expansion of planting has increased the age-old conflict between elephants and farmers. The elephants are ravenous eaters of bananas, rice, sugar cane, and melons, and devastate entire plantations.
It is estimated that there are still between 40,000 and 50,000 elephants in Asia. But in 6 of the 13 countries where they live (Bangladesh, China, Bhutan, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Nepal), there are no more than 300.
Experts observe that rodents, birds, and monkeys cause much more damage to the fields, but the elephants are more hated because their herds often destroy everything and kill or wound the farmers. In India, the home of about 60% of Asia's wild elephants, it is calculated that between 200 and 250 people die each year while resisting the foraging animals. In response, the rural population kills the pachyderms with old rifles, or poisons them.
"Once an elephant has tasted cultivated foods", says Raman Sukumar, one of the world's leading experts on elephants, "it develops a preference for them, and will always come back to look for them, because it prefers them to the wild foods of the forest". Experts suggest putting packs of cigarettes, bottles of beer, and other bad-tasting substances in the fields. But the elephants nonetheless trample the crops and damage houses and sheds. Subsidies have been offered for the cultivation of eggplant and spices, which the elephants do not like.
Others observe that the farmers want nothing more than a better life, and suggest offering improvements in quality of life, and another kind of work.
In Vietnam there are no more than 80 elephants, on the border with Cambodia and Laos. Ha Bich Nguyen of the group Fauna & Flora International says that "The elephant habitats are in very sensitive areas where very poor people who need to develop economically live". "The conflict is whether people or the elephants survive. Even with all our efforts and doing our best, we cannot help save them from extinction".
