A milestone in a worthy project....
Officially anyway, there have been whispers on the grape vines that several of the wild elephants in National Parks are, in fact, released ex-domestic elephants let go between the time that logging was banned and the time (just when I started looking at buying eles - ooops) the price of eles recovered.
The Royal Project seems an excellent endeavour, I don't see that elephants should have too much trouble reverting to the wild; it seems that the traditional way for Maharajahs to obtain a baby elephant for their Maharanis to keep as a pet was to let a female go back to the wild and then go and call her back after eighteen months, hopefully pregnant; the old books are full of stories of 'escaped' domestics turning up again six months later, contrite and pregnant; in Nepal Roop Kali just used to break her chains and disappear into the jungle for a week or so at a time - too old to be broody, just wanted to be alone in the wild.
It is my dream to let our girls go and have them pop back in every time they fancied a banana - the problem may be that their familiarity with humans will lead them to have no worries about visiting neighbouring rice paddies and orchards - old stories, by definition, happen in the old days when the forests were endless and luckily for Roop Kali and Tiger Tops their story takes place in Chitwan National Park which still is (almost).
My only worries with the project covered in the article would be that the number of elephants to be released has been apparently decided on eighty in order to celebrate Her Majesty Queen Sirikit's eightieth birthday (upcoming on August 12th 2012) rather than on the carrying capacity of the land in question.
Apparently the land is 166 square kilometres which sounds a lot but the figure, oft quoted (but not qualified) on the internet, if five females per square kilometre which would not give them enough room. However, no-one providing that number has linked to the scientific research from which it came, I have seen it used for both species and several different National Parks on both range continents and even I know that the carrying capacity of an area forest very much depends on the habitat types; if it is all tall grass/swamp land then perhaps no problem, if it is all dry dipterocarp then they may have hungry eles.
Also, I hope they released at least one other female elephant to keep Pang Kam Mool Yai company (Perhaps a male would have made a better solitary release?), I feel the elephants will be far more likely to adjust to not having humans around if there are other eles to form a herd - again I don't know that they didn't, it just doesn't say so in the story and I cannot find anyone who does know.
Our Pang Kam Mool is a little old for such experiments but even though she does love her bananas and is becoming more and more like her mahout K. Win everyday (in stomach as in character) I suspect she's a little jealous of her newly wild namesake cousin.
Good luck to the project, we will be watching it closely, one day, one day, I would love to help in an endeavour close to this on land contiguous with a National Park - even if the 'totally wild' doesn't work, elephants living 'as wild' but watched by mahouts until they choose to pass into a wild herd or come back to the bananas and sugar cane life of a cosseted domestic - now wouldn't that be something?
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First elephant released into wild under foundation plan
After two years of careful training to prepare Pang Kham Mool Yai for life in the wild, the 35-year-old elephant was yesterday released into the Sublangka Wildlife Sanctuary.
Kham Mool Yai is the first domesticated elephant to be introduced to the wild under a programme that will see a further 80 released over time by the Elephant Reintroduction Foundation.
However, many fear the animals may not be able to adjust.
Kasetsart University's Narit Bhumiphakphan said domestic elephants born and raised in captivity depended on humans for survival.
"It will be very hard for them to change their habits and survive," he said.
But foundation chairman Sumet Tantivejkul argued Kham Mool Yai had two years to learn to survive.
The elephant has been living in Sublangka with her mahout during that time.
"She is now ready to live in the forest as a wild animal," he added.
Sumet explained foundation staff would observe Kham Mool Yai for the next five years. The foundation was established several years ago in response to concerns of Her Majesty the Queen.
When indigenous logging was ended in Thailand in the 1980s, thousands of domesticated elephants were out of work.
Handlers were forced to roam them in cities, begging for money or food to care for the animals.
Pasara Puthamat
The Nation
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P.S. Just noticed the project has a blog - http://elephantreintroduction.blogspot.com which is mainly in Thai and has some great photos.
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