Myanmar is to hold a census of its wild elephant population amid concerning reports of increasing conflict between the animals and their human neighbors.
At a workshop of forestry department officials and international conservation groups held July 8, Minister for Natural Resources and Environment Ohn Win talked about an ‘alarming increase in human and wild elephant deaths because of a loss of natural habitat’, according to the Myanmar Times.
A total of 35 people and 95 wild elephants have died in encounters with one another since 2010, according to the report. While people complain of crop and property destruction at the hands of the animals, elephants are living with less and less territory as human settlement encroaches on their territory.
Ohn Win attributed the conflict in part to rapid deforestation – the country’s forest cover has fallen some 42 per cent since 1990 according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
“With increasing habitat loss and rising levels of HEC (human-elephant conflict), elephant conservation in Myanmar is a challenge no one group can address alone,” Nick Cox from WWF Myanmar, which co-hosted the workshop, told the Times.
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