Conservationists hope to avoid teenage kicks over elephant's false leg

Handlers face daunting task of fitting a powerful and dangerous male Cambodian elephant with a new and larger false leg

Wednesday 5 January 2011

Fiona MacGregor

guardian.co.uk

When English wildlife rescuer Nick Marx found three-legged baby elephant Chhouk wandering through the Cambodian jungle, he thought the injured youngster would never survive the snare injuries that cost him his front foot. But after a UK-based prosthetic charity's groundbreaking intervention to fit Chhouk with a false leg two years ago, the little elephant has gone from strength to strength. And as Chhouk, now aged five, enters the elephant equivalent of his hormonal teens, his handlers are faced with the daunting task of fitting a powerful and dangerous male elephant with a new and larger false leg.

Marx and his team at the Phnom Tamao rescue centre, outside the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, are using a hands-off training methods along with the help of Chhouk's adopted "big sister" Lucky, an older female elephant who was also rescued as a baby, to teach him to enter a special enclosure where he can have his false foot safely fitted. It will also minimise his contact with humans allowing him to live a more natural life according to Marx.

Meanwhile staff from the Cambodia Trust, a UK-based charity which runs a school for creating human prosthetics in the heavily land-mined south-east Asian country, are trying to come up with innovative ways to create a false leg that is strong enough to keep the increasingly heavy elephant on his feet.

Marx, and the Wildlife Alliance charity which supports Chhouk, are currently raising funds for the new $30,000 (£19,234) enclosure for Chhouk. He will enter a confined space where his keepers can reach through and fit his foot from behind protective barriers. He has two prosthetics - made from plastic and the kind of foam used inside training shoes – a sturdy one for day time and a softer more comfortable one he wears during the night when putting less weight on it.

"He's a brave little chap and it's his courage and tenacity that have kept him alive," said Marx as he watched Chhouk and Lucky playing together during their daily bath. But though playful Chhouk still looks cute, Marx warned that an adult male elephant is always dangerous. It is rare for an elephant to survive long after losing a limb, and although two female elephants in Thailand have been fitted with prosthetic limbs in recent years, Chhouk's male hormones make him a far more troublesome patient.

"He's just a little boy getting on with his life and mostly as long as he's got his food he's happy. But he's a male elephant and they can be aggressive," said Marx.

Wildlife charities in Cambodia believe there are now as few as 200-300 wild elephants remaining in Cambodia, although population studies there have only begun recently and data remains sketchy.