Half of the wild elephants in Dong Nai province have been wiped out inrecent years, despite steps taken by the Prime Minister to save them.

A project that he initiated five years ago to provide them withsanctuary in three "elephant" provinces by the year 2010 failed to getunderway in the province.

Under the plan, Dong Nai in thesouth, Nghe An in the centre and Dak Lak in the Central Highlandswere to co-operate with relevant bodies to protect the rare beasts.

The decision was made after the number of wild elephants fell from asmany as 2,000 in 1975-80 to only 100 in 2006, said the director of theDong Nai Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, Pham Minh Dao.

The provinces were told to set aside wilderness areas for them and survey elephant populations in each.

They were also told to implant positioning devices in the elephants sothey could be tracked, research their reproduction rates so that numberscould be increased, and stop poachers from killing them and tradingtheir tusks, tails and meat.

The project got underway inDak Lak and Nghe An provinces and research on their reproduction rateswas gathered. Training courses were set up to train people in caring forthem.

However, the project was not started in Dong Naibecause authorities at different levels could not reach agreement onfund allocations for the project.

The wild elephants in Dong Nai province live in Vinh Cuu, Dinh Quan and Tan Phu districts.

Recently, farmers took over forest land for cultivation, restricting their living and feeding areas.

Nguyen Huu Ly, chairman of the Vinh Cuu District People's Committeesaid this apparently outraged the hungry elephants, who started feedingon farmers' crops, particularly at night, destroying the crops in theprocess.


Since 2007, the province has spent morethan 3 billion VND (142,850 USD) compensating local residents whosefarms have been damaged.

In the last two years, nine wild elephants in the province have been found dead and now only nine survive.

The project to save them was not implemented because authorities atdifferent levels could not decide if funds to run it should be from theState or provincial budget, said Dao.

The province set upthe project in 2008 expecting to spend about 21.26 billion VND (1.01million USD). Twenty per cent of the funds were supposed to come fromthe provincial budget, and the remainder from the State budget.

Under the Prime Minister's Decision 733 in 2006, the Ministry ofAgriculture and Rural Development (MARD) was assigned to join hands withthe Ministry of Planning and Investment and the Ministry of Finance toallocate money, he said.

However, until this day, the province had received no funds from MARD, said Dao.

Meanwhile, Ha Cong Tuan, director of the Vietnam Administration ofForestry under MARD, said the project was being implement by Dong Naiauthorities so the work of allocating funds should be borne by theprovincial People's Committee.

Deputy Chairman of theprovincial People's Committee Tran Van Vinh said the committee hadapproved a document from the provincial Department of Agriculture andRural Development asking it to lengthen the time frame for the elephantpreservation project to 2012.

Meanwhile, Vuong Van Thinh,head of the Administration and Finance Division under the Department ofFinance, said the department would soon have a reply to the provincialPeople's Committee about the source funding.

He said that after being approved by the committee, the plan would be submitted to the Prime Minister for a final decision. /.