Habitat destruction is confining Asian elephants to “such small areas that
they can’t meet their food and water requirements”, says Steve Osofsky of the US
branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature. Conservationists had warned of the
danger years ago (New Scientist, 15 January 1994, p 34). “Most of what
has changed since then has been for the worse,” says Osofsky. There are fewer
than 50,000 Asian elephants left in the wild. In 1998, Vietnam had fewer than
150 elephants—a tenth of the number in 1990.
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