Elusive Wild Elephants Captured on Film in Cambodia

A still from the unique video, which shows the shy beast placidly munching on greenery. Credit: Allan Michaud.

Dec 22, 2010
By OurAmazingPlanet Staff

Wild Asian elephants have been captured on film in Cambodia, a country where the shy giants are rarely seen, an international conservation organization announced yesterday (Dec. 21).

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has just released what may be the first high-quality professional footage of wild Asian elephants ever taken in the south Asian country. Decades of civil war and instability in the latter part of the 20th century made Asia’s largest land mammal shy and difficult to observe directly.

Wildlife photographer Allan Michaud shot footage of the shy beasts on July 24 in the newly established Seima Protection Forest, a 1,100-square-mile (2,850-square kilometer) protected area along Cambodia’s eastern border with Vietnam.

"It does seem surprising that such a large animal is actually quite elusive, but they usually avoid humans,” said Edward Pollard of WCS’s Cambodia Program. "This new footage is a great visual confirmation that Seima is vitally important for biodiversity, as well as the protection of forest carbon."

The footage captures images of a male Asian elephant casually feeding on grass on the margin of a road that runs through Seima Protection Forest, which contains a significant percentage of Cambodia’s elephant population.

In 2006, surveys that collected DNA from elephant dung revealed a population of approximately 116 animals within the protected area — but not a single elephant was seen during the study.

Most of the images of wild elephants from the region come from camera traps. The film represents only the third elephant sighting along the Seima road in the past five years.

Researchers have noted that along with the recent elephant sighting, other species observed along the road include gaur (an Asian species of wild cattle), a monkey species known as a black-shanked douc, four other species of primate, and green peafowl, indicating that wildlife are adapting to the road.

A Gaur (Khting) killed 1 in Kompong Speu

Villagers look at a wild gaur ("khting" in Khmer) in Kampot province (Photo: Neay Keb, Koh Santepheap newspaper)

Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Everyday.com.kh
Translated from Khmer by Socheata

In an unusual incident, a gaur went on rampage after five men who were collecting woods on top of the Phnom Thom Mountain, located in Oral district, Kompong Speu province, causing one dead and one seriously injured among the group of five. Koh Santepheap reported that the gaur went on a rampage after the men at around 10:00 AM on 26 August. The injured man and the other three men who survived, told the police that a large gaur was going after them, trying to gore them with its antlers, when the five men were resting after collecting woods and setting traps to catch wild animals. Those who climbed up the mountain and ventured into the deep forest were people who usually went in to collect woods and catching wild animals, sometimes they would catch wild boars or wild animals which are sometimes injured from the traps, and these animals would sometimes go after them to try to gore or hurt the humans. Gaurs are currently very rare in the Oral Mountain, and only under this circumstance, that the gaur involved in the incident – which may be injured by traps or shot at – became mad and went on a rampage and killed one man and injured another.