Animal activists: Bad idea to relocate wild elephant that attacked lorry driver

Animal activists are not keen on the idea of tracking down and relocating a wild elephant that attacked a lorry driver last week as suggested by Natural Resources and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar.

Former Malaysian Nature Society (MNS) president Prof Maketab Mohamed said relocating the elephant will not solve any problems.

“This idea is absurd. How will relocating the elephant solve any problem? On top of that, how about other elephants in the area? Does the ministry plan to relocate all of them?” he asked. 

Speaking to Malay Mail, Maketab said the authorities should instead investigate why the elephant attacked the lorry driver.

“There is a possibility that the victim had tried to take photos of the mammal and the flash from the mobile phone could have triggered the attack,” he said.

On Feb 2, a 69-year-old lorry driver suffered broken bones and serious injuries to his neck after he was attacked by a wild elephant near Gerik.

M. Paramanazan, from Sungai Siput Utara, was stomped by the elephant along KM19 of the East-West Highway at 4.30pm after he stopped his lorry to look at the wild beast.

After the incident, Wan Junaidi was reported as saying that the ministry would track down and relocate the elephant in question.

He said the Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan) would move the elephant to the Kuala Gandah Elephant Sanctuary (National Elephant Conservation Centre).

Maketab said before making major decision, the ministry should advise motorists travelling along the Gerik to Jeli Highway to not provoke the animals if they ever come across it.

“Even honking at the elephants, can be a dangerous move as the noise might irritate them,” he said.

Sahabat Alam Malaysia field officer Meor Razak Meor Abdul Rahman said it would be an uphill task for Perhilitan to track down the elephant as its roaming grounds covered Temenggor to Royal Belum.

 “Even if you find the herd, how would you determine which elephant actually trampled the lorry driver?” he asked.

 Agreeing with Maketab that the cause of the attack should be determined first, Meor Razak said the elephant would not have attacked the victim without being provoked first.

He also suggested that Perhilitan provide more information to motorists instead of just putting up animal crossing signboards.

“Presently, the signboards only warn motorists of passing elephants in the area. There should be a do’s and dont’s if one encounters a herd of elephants,” he added.

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Man seriously injured after being trampled by elephant on Malaysian highway

GERIK, Perak: A man was seriously injured after he was trampled by an elephant on Malaysia's Gerik-Jeli East-West Highway between Perak and Kelantan, at about 4.30pm on Thursday (Feb 1). Gerik police chief Superintendent Ismail Che Isa said the victim, Mr M Paramanazan, 69, fractured his left arm ...

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Malaysian elephant roams into Yala, kills rubber tapper

A rubber tapper in Yala, age 75, was killed early Tuesday by a wild elephant that had ventured across the border from Malaysia.

Chaiwat In-on, assistant chief of Bannang Sata, was alerted at 7.30am of the death of Sao Somyos, a resident of Moo 5 village in Tambon Tham Thalu.

The man’s severely damaged body was lying near his hut on the rubber plantation, surrounded by elephant footprints.

Sansern Thep-osoth, chief of Bang Lang National Park, said the animal was a wild elephant that had crossed through the border forest from Malaysia.

Sansern said park officials had already driven it back once, but it was lured by crops on the Thai side.

A wild elephant killed another villager in Yala’s Betong district several months ago, he noted.

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Injured elephant captured in Sabah oil palm plantation dies

Sabah Wildlife Director Augustine Tuuga said the elephant, estimated to be six or seven years of age, had shown signs of injury when it was captured by the Wildlife Department’s Rescue Unit.

He said the elephant was reported to have been aggressive towards plantation workers and villagers in surrounding areas, which led to its capture on Nov 24 at Desa Plantation, and was then taken to Borneo Elephant Sanctuary.

“While undergoing medical examination and treatment, its tongue was found to have serious wound, believed to have been caused by a gunshot.

“The wound on the tongue made the elephant unable to eat or drink,” he said in a statement here tonight.

Tuuga said a post mortem conducted on the elephant found a bullet lodged in the injured front left leg and there were also gunshot marks on the body, but did not penetrate or caused any internal organ injury.

“Dehydration is believed to be the cause of death because the elephant was unable to drink due to the injury on its tongue,” he said.

Tuuga said the Sabah Wildlife Department would be investigating the case as it involved the death of a totally protected species.

“While the Sabah Wildlife Department fully understand the problem faced by the people associated with elephant in their environment, we would really appreciate cooperation from all concerned by contacting the department’s nearest office for assistance to mitigate disturbance and property loss,” he said. — Bernama

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Yet another endangered Borneo pygmy jumbo found dead in Sabah

KOTA KINABALU: Another critically endangered Borneo pygmy elephant has been found dead even as conservationists call for informants and professional investigators to be engaged to stop the killing.

The elephant, the ninth slain in the last 14 months, was a healthy 12-year-old bull named Liningkung, that was fitted with a satellite collar 18 months ago.

It was found in the Ulu Segama Forest Reserve on Sabah’s east coast on Tuesday.

Rangers discovered its decomposed carcass with the tusks untouched.


Liningkung’s movements were being monitored by DGFC on a weekly basis, Goossens said, and they alerted Sabah Forestry officials on Dec 11 to say that it had not moved since Dec 3.

A team is in the area to carry out a post-mortem.

“It is another sad day for elephant conservation. If this goes on, we might be staring at its extinction,” Goossens said.

There are only about 1,500 elephants left in Sabah’s forests.

This is the third elephant found dead in the same area in the past year.

Goossens said it is vital for a special wildlife enforcement unit to be set up to go after wildlife poachers and traders as suggested by chief conservator of forests Datuk Sam Mannan.

Meanwhile, Marc Acrenaz, scientific director for Sabah-based wildlife research and conservation NGO Hutan, said informers and professional investigators are needed to stop the killing.

“Many years ago, locals killed these animals for food and it was not too serious.

“Now, we see that things have changed and people are poaching for the international trade or killing them because of animal-human conflicts,” he said.

No suspects have been identified in many of these cases, including a recent incident where a bull elephant was shot in the mouth and died of dehydration because it could not eat or drink.

“The authorities lack people on the ground,” Acrenaz said.

“We need a strong team which can identify the culprits and bring them to justice,” he said, adding that the killings might stop then.

For now, Acrenaz said, there are not enough rangers to cover all the places where animals – especially endangered species like the pygmy elephants, orang utan and pangolins – roam.

He said the three main reasons for poaching and killing were conflicts between landowners and animals (especially elephants), poaching of bush meat because of demand by tourists, and the international underground trade in exotic meat and animal parts like ivory and pangolin scales.


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Another Pygmy Elephant is Shot Dead

The wild pygmy elephant was found dead near a small river at an oil palm plantation in Tawau. The pachyderm’s remains were riddled with three bullets. It doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to figure out what happened: the bull elephant had been killed either by plantation workers or local farmers in revenge for wading into crops or by poachers.

“The tusks are still there and we found gunshot wounds,” Augustine Tuuga, director of Sabah’s Wildlife Department, explained. “I believe it was done by poachers.”

This pygmy elephant is the seventh pachyderm that is known to have been killed in the past year, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature. In the past four months alone four pygmy elephants have been gunned down in Sabah. In August plantation workers discovered a female pygmy elephant suffering from several gunshot wounds at an oil palm plantation by the Malua Forest Reserve in Kinabatangan. She died of her injuries.

In early September, meanwhile, the remains of an elephant were found, without its tusks, at a plantation near Dumpas in Kalabakan. Soon thereafter, another pachyderm was discovered floating in the Kinabatangan river. It, too, had had its tusk sawn off by poachers.

The killings have alarmed conservationists and local wildlife officials. Pygmy elephants are increasingly beleaguered in Sabah. They are at risk of being killed by irate plantation workers for wading into crops; they are at risk of being poached for their ivory; and they are also at risk of being run over while crossing roads dissecting forests. Having lost much of their ancestral forests to oil palm cultivation and logging, these placid giants are now facing hardships and dangers across their range in Sabah.

“These animals belong to us all and are beneficial to us economically,” Masidi Manjun, Sabah’s minister of Culture, Tourism and Environment, has stressed, calling on locals to protect the state’s wild elephants.

Here’s hoping locals will heed such calls and set about saving the state’s pygmy elephants from any further harm.

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Wild Elephants ‘can Inflict Harm on Plantations.’ So What to Do?

Millions of ringgit in losses over an area of 30 hectares. That’s how much damage a herd of feeding elephants can inflict on a plantation, according to the Sabah Wildlife Department. In just a single night elephants can destroy six hectares of crops, the department’s head Augustine Tuuga explained.

“Elephant raids are a major problem for plantations in areas where elephants are found,” the director was quoted as saying by Free Malaysia Today. “These herds damage oil palm trees and eat the shoots, causing the companies to incur big losses.” He cited the case of Sabah Softwood Bhd, which lost property estimated to be worth RM3 million to elephants.

None of this is in any doubt. Even a single elephant, which fully grown can weigh 3 tons and consume as much as 200kg of food in a single day, can decimate crops by feeding on much of them, uprooting trees and trampling on a lot of cultivated plants. Several elephants can in turn create havoc. To make matters worse, elephants’ dietary preferences expose them to increased risks of coming into conflict with humans because they may fancy a bite or two of certain cultivated crops.

Yet we have to remember that elephants do not do this out of malice. They simply need to feed. And the only reason why they often barge into cultivated areas like plantations is that they have lost much of their natural feeding grounds in the wild. “The rapid shrinkage of forest cover and large-scale encroachment on elephant corridors are the main factors behind this escalating problem,” explains Mohamed Idris, president of the conservationist group Sahabat Alam Malaysia. “The last decade has seen appalling destruction of forests, something that is having direct effects on wild elephant populations.”

Farmers destroy the pachyderms’ habitats, and then they are angered when elephants show up in their plantations and chew up crops. Sadly, some farmers do not leave it at that and seek to take revenge by shooting or poisoning wild elephants. Such revenge attacks have been going on sporadically for years, in addition to the poaching of wild elephants for their tusks and other body parts. Just a few week ago two pygmy elephants were found dead in Sabah. Their remains were discovered a few days apart in Tawau and Sandakan. The tusks of one had been sawn off.

Sad, that. We need to be more tolerant of wild animals. If they cause harm, our response should not be to lash out in revenge but rather to cultivate forbearance. We need to adopt a live-and-let-live attitude. To foster such attitudes, the government can do its part by compensating farmers for their losses. That way, they will be far less inclined to seek revenge against foraging elephants.

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Plantations in Sabah losing millions because of elephants

KOTA KINABALU: Oil palm plantations are losing millions from damaged crops, sometimes spanning 30 hectares in total, when elephant herds raid the area, says the Sabah Wildlife Department.
Its director Augustine Tuuga told FMT that smallholders were hit the hardest as they could sometimes lose up to six hectares of crops in just one night.

“Elephant raids are a major problem for plantations in areas where elephants are found.

“These herds damage oil palm trees and eat the shoots, causing the companies to incur big losses,” he said, adding that Sabah Softwood Bhd for example, reported a loss of RM3 million a few years back.

He said that the problem of elephant raids had become so dire that most of the department’s ground staff were in Kg Gambaron in Telupid to deal with the issue, bringing to a virtual standstill, investigations into the recent case of suspected poaching in Kinabatangan.

The department estimated that there were only 2,000 Borneo pygmy elephants left in Sabah and although the number was considered acceptable to many, Tuuga said he was cautious about their survival rates if poaching continued unabated.

He conceded that most of the elephant poachers were locals, who killed the endangered animals mainly for their tusks.

“We found that these tusks were sold overseas but many also sold them to the Timorese who have a custom of offering elephant tusks as dowries.”

On Thursday, the department released a statement that it was investigating suspected poaching activities after an elephant carcass was found floating in the Kinabatangan River near Sg Koyah on Monday.

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Killing of wildlife goes on in Sabah

The slaughter of Sabah’s wildlife continued this month with little signs of slowing down as two critically-endangered Bornean pygmy elephants were killed for tusks and at least nine endangered green turtles were found butchered on the east coast.

The killings sent fresh shockwaves through the conservationist community, which appealed to the public to help put a stop to this.

A dead bull elephant was found floating down the Kinabatangan river close to the Danau Girang Research Centre (DGRC) on Monday, while another was found dead at a plantation in the Dumpas area of Kalabakan on Sept 10.

“This cannot go unpunished. We need to bring these criminals to court,” conservationist Dr Benoit Goossens said.


Dr Goossens, the director of the Kinabatangan-based DGRC, said that with fewer than 2,000 elephants in Sabah, the population would be in jeopardy if the killing of mature bulls goes on.

“Elephants are already threatened by habitat loss and conflict with humans. If you add poaching, the species will not survive. We must get rid of the poachers and traders,” he said.

Sabah Wildlife Department director Augustine Tuuga said the tusks may be bound for Indonesia, where they are used as dowry in some communities.

On the turtles found on Pulau Bum Bum in Semporna district, he said reports indicated that all nine were stripped of their flesh and the lower shell, called the plastron.

He said the turtle killings may have been committed by members of the same group detained by the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) early this year.

Augustine said the MMEA detained a boat from southern Philippines, with four men on board, bound for Semporna loaded with turtle flesh and plastron. The department prosecuted the four men and they were jailed two years and fined RM100,000 each.

Augustine said the wildlife authorities needed the help of villagers and other agencies in protecting endangered animals.

“The killings have to stop but we cannot do it alone,” he said.

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No action against driver of bus which rammed into elephant

Police and the the Wildlife Department will not press charges against the driver of a bus which rammed into a 10-year-old male elephant, which died at Km60 Grik-Jeli road last month.
Grik district police chief Supt Ismail Che Isa said the accident was unintentional and there was no case to pursue.

“Elephants and other wild animals roam freely in the area and such incidents occur,” he added.
Perak Wildlife and National Parks principal assistant director Wan Shaharuddin Wan Noordin said: “There are no criminal elements, and the weather at the time of the incident has to be taken into account.

“Based on the driver’s statement, thick fog had limited the vision about one to five metres.
“The driver could not see the elephant when it crossed the road due to the blurred vision,” he told theSun today.

Wan Shaharuddin said post mortem report by a veterinarian revealed the animal died due to respiratory failure, blood loss, fluid accumulation in the lungs and a broken leg.
As for precautionary measures, he said a total of 10 signboards of wild animals crossing including elephants have been erected along the road.

“Apart from the warning signs the signboard also provide guidelines incase motorists run into animals.

“It is written in Bahasa Malaysia for all passing motorists to understand and take the necessary precautions to avoid any untoward incidents,” he added.

Wan Shaharuddin advised motorists to avoid using the road during the night and rain due to poor vision.

According to him, wild animals would often sit on the road to warm their bodies in the night or after rain.

The bus was travelling to Betong, Thailand from Terengganu with 30 passengers onboard when the accident occurred at 5.30am on Aug 24.

The driver and the passengers escaped unhurt.

The impact of the crash caused the a cracked windscreen and damages to the front portion of the bus.

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Elephant pachyderm, dies after tour bus collision at KM 59 of Gerik-Jeli Highway in Malaysia

Some two months after an elephant calf was run over and killed, another pachyderm, this time, a 10-year-old bull, died after it was struck by a bus on the same stretch of the Gerik-Jeli Highway in Malaysia.

This is despite the many signboards put up to warn motorists about elephants and other
wildlife crossing in the area. The elephant was killed after it was hit by the tour bus early yesterday, as it was crossing at Kilometre 59 in Gerik.

Pictures of the carcass at the scene and the bus with its cracked windscreen and damaged
front end were widely shared on social media, angering many animal lovers and
conservationists. Some asked how the driver had failed to spot such a large animal.

Gerik OCPD Supt Ismail Che Isa said the bus was driven by a 62-year-old man and that
the incident occurred about 5km from the Titiwangsa rest stop.

“The bus was going down a slope and heading towards Gerik when the elephant suddenly
came out of the forest. The driver told us he could not brake in time,” he said.

He said the elephant fell over on impact and then got up and walked to the left side of the
highway. It sat there for awhile and then died.

Supt Ismail said the elephant suffered lacerations on its head and back.
“The bus driver and his 33 passengers were not injured,” he said, adding that the Perak
Department of Wildlife and National Parks (Perhilitan) has been informed of the incident.

In June, a two-year-old elephant was crossing the highway and was killed when a car
collided with it.

State Perhilitan director Loo Kean Seong said the area is an elephant habitat and that the
animals are always roaming, no matter the time of day.

“So motorists must be careful and drive cautiously along that stretch. Please also do not
speed,” he said.

The carcass will be sent for a post-mortem and its tusks will be removed before burial.

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LED light thieves to blame for jumbo incursions

THE woes faced by three Jerantut villages over a rampaging herd of elephants were due to the theft of LED lights designed to keep the jumbos away, Kosmo! reported the Pahang Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan) as saying.

State Perhilitan director Ahmad Azhar Mohammad said irresponsible parties had stolen 30 solar-po­wered LED (light-emitting diodes) floodlights from the entry point to the Lepar Forest Reserve.

These lights were part of an un­­con­­ventional new strategy to stop a herd of 30 wandering elephants from encroaching into human settlements at Kampung Pulau Tawar, Kampung Batu Leja and Kampung Bukit Nikmat.

It was previously reported that the hungry elephants ate the villa­ges’ food crops.

Ahmad Azhar said the herd had been led across Sungai Batu back to the forest, but ended up returning to the villages.

He added that attempts to usher the elephants away from the human settlements were also hampered by the people who came to watch the effort.

> Singer-actress Marsha Milan felt awkward about filming her la­test television film, Terobek Raya, without a script, reported Sinar Harian.

Without the script, the television-film was particularly challenging for the actress who had taken a year away from the industry.

“I was invited by (actress) Ozlynn to take part in the film and I assumed it was just an ordinary story,” said the 31-year-old.

“But when I got to the set, I was surprised by the ‘script’ that wasn’t really a script.

“At first I thought they were setting me up, but I understood after they explained the situation. The film had no script as it was meant to be spontaneous.”

Marsha admitted that she was initially a bit worried, but felt it turned out okay.


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Sabah's jumbo-sized problem in translocating elephant herds

The Sabah Wildlife Department has been working closely with large plantation companies in handling human-elephant conflicts especially, in the east coast of the state.

Department director Augustine Tuuga said, unlike in Peninsular Malaysia where a herd of elephants were moved by trained elephants, the Sabah Wildlife Rescue unit had to use heavy machinery for translocation purposes.

“Those trained elephants are bought from Thailand and India, which require special care that involve higher costs.

“Besides that, (trainers) have to learn foreign languages to give commands to the elephants,” he told the New Straits Times.

Augustine said, however, the translocation method in Sabah involved an estimated cost of RM30,000 per animal.

The cost includes the heavy machinery, allowances for rescue personnel, as well as food for the herd, which can have about 20 or more elephants.

The translocation was made necessary when the “no killing” policy came into effect in 1996. Previously, the authorities had used “elephant bombs” to contain the species.

During the recent Sabah Elephant Film Festival 2017, which was held in conjunction with World Elephant Day, Augustine had said human and elephants here used to live together before the 1960s.

“The villagers in the east coast of Malaysia used to call the elephants as ‘nenek’ (granny) as a gesture of respect for the species.

“When forests were slowly converted into plantations, authorities began to receive reports of damages caused by elephants,” said the director, who had been dealing with wildlife for three decades.

He said at worst, about 100 elephants would gather at one location in one night and cause damages to several acres of plantations.

There had been reports that bees buzzing sounds or light bulbs may be able to ward elephants from getting near to plantations.

Augustine, however, said none of the methods had proven effective to date, as compared to electrical fencing, was can be afforded by big plantation companies and not smallholders.

Meanwhile, Wildlife Rescue Unit veterinarian Dr Laura Benedict said the team had encountered many incidents of elephant herds came too close to places with human population.

“There were incidents of elephants going under stilt houses, which required prompt response to translocate the animals.

“In cases where elephants had died, 32 per cent were poisoned and 16 per cent were suspected being poisoned,” she said, citing among others, the notorious incident where 14 pygmy elephants were killed in the Gunung Rara forest in 2013.

Based on a study by the Sabah Wildlife Department and World Wide Fund for Nature, there were 2,050 Borneo Pygmy elephants about 10 years ago.

There were also reports that elephants were being poached for their tusks, some of which are used as wedding dowry in Indonesia.

However, the recent killing of a female pygmy elephant with multiple gunshots in Kinabatangan remains a mystery as the animal has no tusk.

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Residents worry over encroachment of wild elephants at school

The appearance of few wild elephants at a school in Bandar Penawar here has caused panic to the people as the uninvited guests has damaged some of the school’s property here in Kota Tinggi.
KOTA TINGGI: Several wild elephants that entered school grounds in Bandar Penawar here are causing panic among residents.

They are urging the Johor Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan) to come up with long-term solutions to prevent the elephants from encroaching their settlements.

The pictures of the wild elephants, which had damaged the school’s property, went viral on Facebook since Sept 3.

It had received over 1,000 likes and more than 900 shares with netizens expressing their concern.
Zone Eight residents representative committee chairman Abdul Wahab Manan said on Tuesday that the herd had destroyed the landscaping at the school.

“Fortunately, no one was injured as the school was closed for the long break. This is the first time that wild elephants have encroached into settlements,” he said.

Abdul Wahab hoped Perhilitan and the Pengerang local council will work together to ensure that wild elephants do not trespass again.

Johor Perhilitan director Jamalun Nasir said the department would investigate the incident.
He believed the wild elephants, which came from the Panti forests and Felda settlement areas in the Kota Tinggi district, had strayed into the settlements.

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10-year-old elephant killed by tour bus in Malaysia

A 10-year-old elephant was killed on Wednesday (Aug 23) morning after it was hit by a tour bus along the Gerik-Jeli Highway, according to wildlife activist group Management & Ecology of Malaysian Elephants (MEME).

In a Facebook post, MEME shared police photos that showed the injured elephant on the side of the road. The animal was seen to have sustained head and body injuries.

No one on the bus, which sustained a large crack on its windscreen, was reportedly hurt. The Malay Mail cited Gerik police deputy chief Mohd Sohaimi Ishak as saying that the bus was driving down a slope when the elephant suddenly ran across its path.

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1,000 villagers in Pahang under siege by elephants

MORE than 1,000 residents at three villages in Jerantut, Pahang, have been living on the edge over the past week.

They face a risk of being attacked by a herd of 11 wild elephants, which have destroyed more than 50ha of their banana and oil palm smallholdings.

Pulau Tawar asssemblyman Dr Ahmad Shukri Ismail said the pachyderm attacks began last Friday, and continued the past week, forcing residents to seek assistance from the Pahang National Parks and Wildlife Department (Perhilitan).

“The animals also destroyed the plants and tried to approach the houses of villagers, prompting us to implement tight controls for the people’s safety.

“Among the affected villages are Kampung Kelola, Kampung Bukit Nikmat and Kampung Batu Leja,” he said yesterday after visiting the affected villagers whose property was destroyed during the incident.

While disclosing that the last time the area faced attacks from wild elephants was in 2003, Ahmad Shukri did not deny that this time, the attacks were the result of extensive forest exploration in nearby areas.

He said he would propose to the state government to create a protected area for elephants and other wildlife in an area measuring 12,140ha to preserve their habitat.

“We will hold a special meeting on August 22 at Perhilitan in Kuantan to discuss the matter,” he added.

Meanwhile, Pahang Perhilitan director Ahmad Azhar Mohammed said his department was devising a way to keep the animals in their habitat to ensure the safety of villagers.

“We believe these wild elephants are from the nearby forest reserve, searching for food, and we must take swift action to prevent the villages from becoming their new habitat,” he noted.

Among the methods used are firecrackers, blue LED lights and firing gunshots into the air to scare the herd from approaching the villages.

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Elephant dies after being hit by tour bus in Malaysia

Some two months after an elephant calf was run over and killed, another pachyderm, this time, a 10-year-old bull, died after it was struck by a bus on the same stretch of the Gerik-Jeli Highway in Malaysia.

This is despite the many signboards put up to warn motorists about elephants and other wildlife crossing in the area.

The elephant was killed after it was hit by the tour bus early yesterday, as it was crossing at Kilometre 59 in Gerik.

Pictures of the carcass at the scene and the bus with its cracked windscreen and damaged front end were widely shared on social media, angering many animal lovers and conservationists.

Some asked how the driver had failed to spot such a large animal.

Gerik OCPD Supt Ismail Che Isa said the bus was driven by a 62-year-old man and that the incident occurred about 5km from the Titiwangsa rest stop.

"The bus was going down a slope and heading towards Gerik when the elephant suddenly came out of the forest. The driver told us he could not brake in time," he said.

He said the elephant fell over on impact and then got up and walked to the left side of the highway. It sat there for awhile and then died.

Supt Ismail said the elephant suffered lacerations on its head and back.

"The bus driver and his 33 passengers were not injured," he said, adding that the Perak Department of Wildlife and National Parks (Perhilitan) has been informed of the incident.

In June, a two-year-old elephant was crossing the highway and was killed when a car collided with it.

State Perhilitan director Loo Kean Seong said the area is an elephant habitat and that the animals are always roaming, no matter the time of day.

"So motorists must be careful and drive cautiously along that stretch. Please also do not speed," he said.

The carcass will be sent for a post-mortem and its tusks will be removed before burial.

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Elephants a common sight in Dumpas Plantation

A herd of wild elephants is a common sight at the Dumpas oil palm plantation near the Kalabakan-Tawau road here. The plantation’s manager Mohd Rahmat said the elephants were seen roaming the area of the workers’ quarters at about 2pm yesterday, believed to be looking for food.

He said to avoid undesirable incidents, the Dumpas elephant monitoring team and Wildlife Department personnel had chased the elephants away from the plantation area to the nearby forest.

“The elephant herd has been spotted many times in the plantation area and we will closely monitor them by doing regular patrols,” he said when contacted by Bernama here today.

As of yesterday, he said no incidents had been reported due to the problem, which went viral on social media.

The elephants have also been spotted in areas like Brumas, Cenderamata, Benta Wawasan, Kalabakan and Felda Umas, he said.

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(The Star) RM15mil sanctuary for elephants soon

Work on the first phase of the RM15mil Johor Elephant Sanctuary is underway and will provide a safe home for about 15 elephants.

Johor Health, Environment, Information and Education Committee chairman Datuk Ayub Rahmat said a contractor was appointed in May to start work on the 100ha project.

“The first phase will see about 15 elephants being housed in the sanctuary located along Jalan Lombong, not far from the Kota Tinggi waterfall, where the wild animals can roam freely,” he said.

He said the first phase was scheduled for completion at the end of next year and with that, help improve the conflict between wild elephants and humans in Kluang and Kota Tinggi.

He added that the sanctuary would also doubled as a tourism attraction for nature lovers to get close to the elephants.

“Johor’s vast forests are habitats to about 140 wild elephants where Segamat, Kluang, Mersing and Kota Tinggi are their stomping grounds,” he said.

The rapid developments and deforestation leading to the shrinking of the wild animals’ natural habitat have caused the animals to enter villages in search of food, creating conflicts with humans.

Ayub said the state received 75 complaints from residents and villagers of wild elephants encroaching into their farms and villages from January to May this year.

The highest complaints came from Kluang and Kota Tinggi with Kampung Sri Lukut and Mawai respectively being the most affected villages, he said.

The Department of Wildlife and National Parks (Perhilitan) received an average 181 complaints from villagers and the agricultural industry each year from 2011 to 2016 with damages amounting to about RM1.2mil annually.

Ayub said since 2008 to May this year, Perhilitan transferred 48 wild elephants out of Kluang alone and each transfer process cost about RM50,000.

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Malaysia: Electric fence to keep elephants away in the works

An electric fence will be built in Gua Musang to reduce the risk of conflict with elephants as their habitat continues to shrink because of deforestation activities.

Natural Resources and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said he was seeking RM200,000 from the Finance Ministry for the fence.

“Building it is one of the mitigation measures to reduce conflict in areas populated by humans, while at the same time conserving the wild elephant population in its original habitat.

“Electric fencing is a long-term solution to the problem of wild elephants raiding human settlements for food,” Dr Wan Junaidi said in a statement after a recent incident at SK Seri Permai in Pos Pasik, Gua Musang.

Several wild elephants damaged fencing, doors and windows when they fed on bananas from the plants behind the teachers’ quarters.

Fortunately, the incident occurred on June 30, when the teachers and students were away during the Hari Raya break.

The school authorities reported the incident to the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (Perhilitan) on July 2.

The elephants also left behind piles of dung.

“The elephant incident in Gua Musang was the first in five years,” Dr Wan Junaidi said.

“Based on Perhilitan’s findings, the damage was caused by three elephants from the Bertam elephant herd.”

It is learnt that this herd is made up of about 20 elephants.

The damage caused was estimated at RM7,000.

“I have directed the ministry, through Perhilitan, to implement short and long-term mitigation plans to address conflict involving elephants,” Dr Wan Junaidi said, adding that short-term measures include shooting to scare away the elephants.

He also appealed to members of the public not to take matters into their own hands during conflict situations with wild animals.

“I appeal to all the stakeholders to give full co-operation to ensure sustainable management of the wild elephant population in the country,” he said.

Pos Pasik village chief Hashim Harun said the elephants raided the banana plantation at 4am and destroyed about 100 plants.

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