'Help save the elephants'
2003-09-22 13:56
Colombo - Researchers from Asia and Africa urged the United Nations and governments on Sunday to help minimise human-elephant conflicts that claim hundreds of lives a year and destroy crops.
The experts wrapped up a three-day meeting here with a unanimous call for the world body and individual governments to take an active role in elephant conservation.
"What came out in the past three days is the need for governments to get involved," said Jayantha Jayewardene, the managing trustee of the Colombo-based Biodiversity and Elephant Conservation Trust, a co-organiser of the symposium.
He said that despite the massive research on conservation by individuals and non-governmental groups, implementation would remain a problem unless there was political support.
"It is not a problem unique to one country," Jayewardene said. "We have this problem in almost all of our countries."
The symposium opened on Friday focusing on Asia's reverence of the beasts to promote conservation amid calls to cull oversized elephant populations in Africa.
A top authority on African elephants, Ian Douglas-Hamilton, said religion and cultural practices in Asia could serve as a model for peaceful co-existence between people and animals.
Experts estimate the number of wild elephants roaming 34 countries in Africa at about 600 000, while the total population of pachyderms in 13 Asian nations hovers between 35 000 and 40 000.
Elephants are considered a sacred animal in Sri Lanka and throughout the Buddhist world. Elephants are also revered by Hindus who use caparisoned pachyderms at temple pageants.