Reuters - Asian Elephants Losing The Battle For Living Space

[hatrack]

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - "Asia can be a very crowded place, especially if you are an elephant. The shrinking natural habitat of Asian elephants in recent decades has forced them into increased and often violent contact with humans, said environmentalists and wildlife experts who met recently in Colombo to find ways to tackle the problem.

In India alone, home to more than half the continent's estimated 35,000 pachyderms, about 200 wild elephants die every year in conflict with people or killed for ivory.

"Elephants are shot, snared, electrocuted, run into by trains, poisoned in retaliation and everywhere deprived of habitat," said Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder and director of the Save the Elephants group.

Elephants are reduced to scavenging for food in such places as a stinking garbage dump in Mannampitiya, in Sri Lanka, an island that is home to about 3,000 elephants. The dump is now an infamous elephant-watching spot."

EDIT

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/22551/story.htm

[GAspnes]

1. yet another tragedy

it's a shame we're such a successful predator.