Yahoo – AFP,
January 16, 2016
Taik Kyi (Myanmar) (AFP) - Pushed from their forest home by encroaching farm land, wild elephants are driving fearful villagers in a Myanmar township to seek refuge in tree houses while the animals storm their rice paddies looking for food.
Residents stand near a tree house in the Kyauk Ye village on the outskirts of Yangon on January 14, 2016 (AFP Photo/Ye Aung Thu) |
Taik Kyi (Myanmar) (AFP) - Pushed from their forest home by encroaching farm land, wild elephants are driving fearful villagers in a Myanmar township to seek refuge in tree houses while the animals storm their rice paddies looking for food.
The
elephants have trampled crops, destroyed homes and even, villagers say, killed
people in their path -- forcing families in Kyat Chuang to build new shelters
made of wood and bamboo on higher ground.
"We
have had to move our huts into the trees, so we are safe," explained San
Lwin, who dashes several metres up a tree to his thatch-roofed shelter when the
elephants are near.
Villagers
in Kyat Chaung, a farming community 100 kilometres north of Yangon, told AFP
they yearned for the days before the elephant rampages started three years ago.
A man
climbs up to a tree house in Taik Kyi village on the outskirts of
Yangon on
January 14, 2016 (AFP Photo/Ye Aung Thu)
|
Now they
scamper up home-made bamboo ladders to their elevated huts whenever they hear
the thundering sound of elephant feet, which is usually several times a week.
"We
want them to be taken away ... so we can live peacefully," said Than Shin,
a 57-year-old farmer.
Spurred by
the loss of their forest habitats, the elephants, and villagers they have been
terrorising, are some of the casualties of Myanmar's alarming rate of
deforestation, one of the fastest in the region.
The country
lost almost 20 percent of its forest cover between 1990 and 2010, according to
the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.
But the endangered species is increasingly threatened by habitat loss, a thirst for ivory, and traffickers who smuggle the animals into Thailand for the tourist industry.
Experts say the chief drivers of forest loss are logging and large-scale land concessions for commercial agriculture handed out under decades of opaque junta rule.
Myanmar's population of wild Asian elephants is thought to be one of the largest in the region, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
Myanmar's population of wild Asian elephants is thought to be one of the largest in the region, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
Wild
elephants are driving fearful villagers in a Myanmar township to seek
refuge in
tree houses (AFP Photo/Ye Aung Thu)
|
But the endangered species is increasingly threatened by habitat loss, a thirst for ivory, and traffickers who smuggle the animals into Thailand for the tourist industry.
The
newly-elected National League for Democracy (NLD) -- the pro-democracy party of
Aung San Suu Kyi that swept to a thumping majority in landmark elections in
November -- said Thursday it would address Myanmar's medley of environmental
issues after assuming office later this year.
"We
will try to restore the environment in Myanmar that has been ruined for many
decades," Soe Nyunt, vice chairman of the NLD's Environmental Conservation
Committee told AFP.
"It
will not be easy," he added.
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