Small skirmishes mark Asia battle to save elephants

By Gillian Murdoch

KOMPONG SPEU, Cambodia (Reuters) - From nightfall until 3 a.m. the villagers of Trang Troyeung commune, in Cambodia's southwest Kompong Speu province, battled to protect their banana grove from attacks by elephants.

Camped in a field that backs onto Kirirom National Park, where some of Cambodia's last 250 wild elephants roam, they repelled the animals' by banging pots and patrolling frontlines. But not for long.

"We fell asleep because we were tired and the elephants came back and ate the bananas at 4 a.m." said human-elephant conflict expert Tuy Sereivathana of the fateful night about a year ago. "We stayed up all night. We slept in the field. But we lost".

Such small turf wars have plagued countless agricultural communities for thousands of years. But rapid forest clearances and dwindling elephant numbers have raised the stakes, both for humans and Asia's 40,000-50,000 endangered elephants.

The continent's fragmenting forests and high population densities mean more human lives are lost every year to rampaging elephants than in Africa, which is home to ten times more elephants.

And with less than 300 Asian elephants left in six of the 13 Asian countries in which they range, experts fear skirmishes over banana groves and rice fields have become a deadly threat that could edge vulnerable populations to extinction.

SMALL SKIRMISHES

From the tea plantations of Sri Lanka to the rice fields of Vietnam, villagers who cannot afford to lose their crops turn on destructive elephants, hunting and killing them.