China's elephants feel the squeeze

Dinah Gardner, Al Jazeera
December 16, 2008

China's wild elephants are so rare – there are only about 300 left in the southern province of Yunnan – that when American tourist Jeremy McGill stumbled across a group earlier this year in a nature reserve he whipped out his camera and started taking photos.

It was a move that almost cost him his life.

"I was alone when I came across the four elephants," he remembers. "One scooped me up into his mouth and bit me. My body was folded in half, my head between my knees, and then the elephant spat me out and stomped on me… Suddenly they stopped and walked away… I was found about an hour later just lying there with my intestines hanging out of my body."

A few weeks after McGill was hurled to the ground, a Chinese migrant worker was crushed to death by an elephant on his way home inside another nature reserve. In June, an elephant killed a female hawker at Wild Elephant Valley, the same nature reserve that McGill was attacked.

For the full story click on the title of the article

China Takes Steps to Counter Wildlife Trade on the Internet

PNN Online
November 21, 2008

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and Taobao, China's largest internet auction site, jointly announced a series of online activities to counter illegal wildlife trade on the Internet.

The rise of the Internet is contributing to the rapid growth of illegal trade in wildlife, which is having a devastating effect on animals and ecosystems. Fast, convenient and anonymous, trading of wildlife on the Internet is posing a major challenge to wildlife conservation and law

For the full article click on the story title

China's threatened elephants turn into killers

Dinah Gardner, The Independent
26 October 2008

There are fewer than 300 wild elephants left in China, so when Jeremy McGill, an American tourist, stumbled across a group of adults earlier this year in a nature reserve in Yunnan province, near the border with Laos, he whipped out his camera and started taking pictures. It almost cost him his life.
"I was alone when I came across the four elephants," he said. "One scooped me up into his mouth and bit me. My body was folded in half, my head between my knees, and then the elephant spat me out and stomped on me. Suddenly they stopped and walked away. I was found about an hour later, just lying there with my intestines hanging out of my body."

A few weeks later, a Chinese migrant worker returning to his home village was stamped to death by an elephant. In Wild Elephant Valley, the same reserve where Mr McGill was attacked, a woman selling food was killed in June. Elephants will get aggressive if they feel threatened, but so many attacks in the space of six months is unusual, according to Grace Gabriel, Asia regional director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), who has worked on elephant conservation projects in China for a decade.

To read the full article click on the story title

Elephant cured of drug addiction

BBC News
4th September 2008

An Asian elephant that became addicted to heroin after being fed bananas spiked with the drug is to return home after undergoing a detox programme.

The four-year-old animal, called Xiguang, received methadone injections for a year at five times the human dosage, state media said.

For the full article click on the story title

Trader on the horns of a legal dilemma

Xu Fang, Shanghai Daily
September 4, 2008

A LOCAL garment trader went on trial yesterday for allegedly smuggling 2.05 million yuan (US$299,537) worth of ivory and related products into the city.

The case was heard by Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court, which is still considering a verdict.

Prosecutors said Zhuang Zhifang, 48, who was conducting garment trades between China and Guinea, was seized by Customs officers for carrying eight pieces of ivory, 16 ivory bangles and two ivory bracelets in her luggage when she arrived at the Pudong International Airport from Paris on May 13. Earlier, she had flown from Guinea to Paris.

The seized ivory weighed 1.3 kilograms and came from African elephants. Prosecutors charged Zhuang with smuggling precious animal products, saying that the defendant, having traveled between China and Guinea several times, should have known ivory and ivory products cannot be brought into the country.

Zhuang admitted she knew it was illegal to carry ivory into China. But the African seller told her that processed ivory was allowed to be traded and carried because it was considered to be a craft article.

For the full article click on the story title

China gets ivory imports go-ahead

BBC News

The UN has given China the green light to bid in a one-off sale of ivory.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) voted in favour of China's request during a meeting being held in Geneva.

China joins Japan as approved buyers of government-owned ivory from South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

In 2007, Cites authorised the four nations to sell off stockpiles of legally held elephant ivory.

In order to gain approval, China had to present evidence to members of the Cites standing committee that it had put in place measures to tackle any illegal domestic sales of ivory.

"China has acted rather successfully against its own illegal domestic ivory market," said Tom Milliken, a director for Traffic, the wildlife trade monitoring network

To read the full article click on the story title

Protecting China's last elephant herd

GoKunming

15 February 2008

*

In addition to sharing a border – and the Mekong River – with Laos, Yunnan province also shares China's last herd of Asian elephants, which in recent years has dwindled to only 400 elephants. The herd lives in nature reserves near the border between China and Laos.

This week the Yunnan Provincial Forestry Department met with their counterparts from Laos in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture to discuss ways to protect the endangered Asian elephant, which falls under China's grade-one protection for endangered animal species.

The representatives from China and Laos reached four major agreements:

1. To educate villagers about how to protect elephants

2. To tighten hunting gun controls

3. To draft a plan for cross-border elephant protection and apply for international funds, and

4. To plan next year's annual meeting in Laos

For the full story click on the blog title

Elephant kills man in China nature park

ABC Online

February 9, 2008

An elephant has killed a man in a Chinese nature reserve where an American tourist was earlier severely injured, the state news agency Xinhua said.

The animal attacked Zeng Shaoping on Wednesday as he returned home after celebrating the Lunar New Year with friends, the agency said, quoting the local Chuncheng Evening News.

Two of his friends raced to the scene when they heard trumpeting noises, and found him lying on the roadside.

An American living in China was severely injured by an elephant in the reserve, in Yunnan province in south-west China, in January.

Jeremy Allen McGill suffered eight broken bones and internal injuries to his lungs and intestines in the attack.

The report said elephants were generally peaceful creatures and only attacked when they felt threatened by other animals or humans encroaching on their territory.

Wild elephants attack in SW China, injure American tourist

Xinhua

January 27, 2008

KUNMING, Jan. 27 (Xinhua) -- An American tourist was seriously injured after he was apparently attacked by wild Asian elephants roaming in a nature reserve in southwest China's Yunnan Province on Thursday, officials confirmed on Sunday.

Jeremy Allen McGill, who teaches English at Huazhong Agricultural University in the central Chinese city of Wuhan and arrived in Xishuangbanna for sightseeing on Wednesday, was under intensive care at the central hospital in the Dai Autonomous Prefecture of Xishuangbanna, the foreign affairs office in Xishuangbanna said.

McGill was found lying unconsciously on the ground at the "Wild Elephant Valley", a nature reserve 50 km from the nearest city of Jinghong, at 7 p.m. on Thursday, said Li Ling, a security guard.

"He was seriously wounded in the belly, apparently by elephants," said Li, who was patrolling the area. "Three elephants were roaming within 20 meters from where he was."

McGill received several operations on Thursday night. Doctors said he was also injured in the lungs and had several fractured ribs.

Officials from the Huazhong Agricultural University, who arrived in Yunnan on Friday, said they were trying to get in touch with McGill's family.

The "Wild Elephant Valley" is a 370-hectare reserve featuring tropical forests, wild birds and animals. It has at least 30 wild elephants and was named one of China's 50 most recommended destinations for foreign tourists in 2006.

Wildlife conservation campaign launched in China

TRAFFIC News Release

November 20, 2007

Beijing, China, 20 November 2007—An advertising campaign aimed at changing consumer attitudes about unsustainable wildlife trade was today launched in Beijing. The campaign, consisting of creative print, video and online advertisements, is part of an awareness-raising project between WWF, the conservation organization, TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, and Ogilvy, an advertising agency.

Each year, hundreds of millions of plants and animals are caught or harvested from the wild in China and then sold as food, pets, ornamental plants, leather, tourist curios and medicine. Although much of this trade is legal and does not harm wild populations, a worryingly proportion is illegal—and threatens the survival of many animal and plant species that are being pushed dangerously close to extinction.

The campaign aims to encourage sustainability in wildlife trade—by informing urban consumers about the environmental harm that illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade causes, and by providing guidance on how to counteract it.

To read the full story click on the blog title

Heroin-addict elephant to rejoin herd after rehab

Reuters

August 30, 2007

BEIJING (Reuters) - A once drug-addled elephant fed heroin-laced bananas by illegal traders will soon return to the wild after being weaned off his addiction through methadone and round-the-clock care.

"Big Brother", a bull elephant that once "lived peacefully" with his herd near the China-Myanmar border in Yunnan province, was caught by traders in 2005, the China Daily said on Thursday.

"To control it so that it could lead the herd to where they wanted, the traders kept feeding it bananas laced with drugs," the paper said.

The traders, however, were caught trying to sell Big Brother and his herd after a tip-off to forest police.

By that time Big Brother had developed a raging heroin addiction and posed a danger to people if denied its fix, the paper said, citing police.

A drooling and twitching Big Brother had to be transported to a special park in the neighbouring island province of Hainan for treatment, after cold turkey proved so tortuous at a local centre that "even its iron chain could not contain it", the paper said.

After being diagnosed a heroin addict, park authorities in Hainan spent a year gradually weaning "Big Brother" off its dependence through methadone, regular bathing and massage.

Now clean, Big Brother will soon be returned home, the paper said.

Foreigner on trial for smuggling 60 kgs of ivory into China

People's DAily Online

April 10, 2007

Hussein Yahya Al-Asri from Yemen went on trial in the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court in south China's Guangdong Province on Monday on charges of smuggling ivory.

Al-Asri, an 27-year-old businessman, was charged after customs discovered 60.73 kilograms valued at 3.5 million yuan (0.45 million U.S. dollars) in his luggage at the Baiyun Airport in Guangzhou on June 7, 2006.

Al-Asri said he tried to tell customs officials he was carrying the ivory but because he couldn't speak Chinese or English, he couldn't make himself understood and failed to declare the 14 pieces of ivory.

He said the ivory was bought from another businessman in Yemen at a cost of 30 U.S. dollars per kilogram and he intended to sell it in China.

For the full story click on the blog title

Tourist injured in elephant attack

China Daily

November 29, 2006

A female tourist from Yunnan Province was badly injured when four elephants attacked her on a road neighbouring a nature reserve in Xishuangbanna over the weekend.

The woman was resting with her tour group at the side of the road when the four elephants attacked.

Experts said such attacks were rarely reported and that the elephants may have been frightened by someone else nearby.

Click on the blog title to read the full story from China Daily