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  Yahoo News 30 Aug 06
Thailand halts 'elephant swap' with China

BANGKOK (AFP) - Thailand has said it has halted plans to swap five endangered Asian elephants with China for white tigers and other animals, citing concerns the pachyderms may have been smuggled into the country.

The government must prove that the elephants were bred in captivity in order to comply with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), a UN body regulating trade in wild animals and plants.

But Damrong Phidet, director general of the National Park, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department, said the government could not prove the five were born to Thai elephants.

"Those five elephants must stay in Thailand because we cannot trace back their origins," Damrong told AFP. "We are afraid that these elephants may have been brought to Thailand from neighbouring countries," he said.

Thailand would try to complete the deal by looking for five other elephants whose origins are properly documented, but that process could take time, he said.

The deal to send the five elephants, all aged between two and three, to China had sounded alarm bells among Thai conservationists who feared the swap would endanger the national elephant population.

The elephants were to be sent from a state-run night safari in the northern city of Chiang Mai and the Chime-Long Night Zoo in Guangzhou, southern China.

Elephants are a national symbol of Thailand, but their numbers have dwindled and activists fear losing more of the herd through swaps with other countries.

Animal rights groups in June formed a human chain around a group of eight elephants to prevent them from being sent to an Australian zoo. The elephants finally made the trip last month.

Fewer than 50,000 Asian elephants remain in the wild and habitat-loss and poaching threaten the existence of the species, particularly in Southeast Asia. Thailand's total elephant population is nearly 5,000, with up to 2,000 of them in the wild.
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