Tag: Elephant

  • Kaavan to be relocated to Cambodia

    Kaavan to be relocated to Cambodia

    The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Saturday approved the relocation of Islamabad Zoo’s lone elephant Kaavan to Cambodia. The court had ordered Kaavan’s freedom in May and instructed wildlife officials to find him a “suitable sanctuary”.

    According to AFP, Adviser to Prime Minister Imran Khan on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam said authorities would “ensure that he lives a happy life”. He revealed that a team from Cambodia is coming over to take the 36-year-old elephant with them.

    “We are bidding Kaavan farewell with a heavy heart. It is a sad decision,” he said.

    Amin also shared that he had discussed Kaavan’s plight with Prime Minister Imran Khan and it had been decided that a safari zoo will be built in Islamabad.

    Authorities told the court that an expert committee had recommended he be moved to a 25,000-acre wildlife sanctuary in Cambodia for retirement.

    Kaavan was kept in chains at Islamabad Zoo and exhibited symptoms of mental illness, prompting global outrage over his treatment and a petition demanding his release that garnered over 400,000 signatures.

    Though zoo officials have denied this and claimed that he was pining for a new mate after his partner died in 2012, Kaavan’s behaviour — including signs of distress such as bobbing his head repeatedly — demonstrated “a kind of mental illness”.

    Activists also said Kaavan was not properly sheltered from Islamabad’s searing summer temperatures, which can rise above 40 degrees Celsius (100 Fahrenheit).

    Kaavan’s plight drew the attention of Cher, who spent years calling for his freedom.

    She tweeted in May that the court’s decision to order his release was “one of the greatest moments of my life”.

    Read more – Cher thanks PM Khan for ‘making her dream come true’

    Arriving in Pakistan as a one-year-old in 1985 from Sri Lanka, Kaavan was temporarily held in chains in 2002 because zookeepers were concerned about increasingly violent tendencies. He was freed later that year after an outcry but it emerged in 2015 that he was once more being regularly chained for several hours each day.

    The court’s May ruling also ordered dozens of other animals — including brown bears, lions and birds — to be relocated temporarily till the zoo improves its standards.

  • Pregnant elephant dies after eating pineapple stuffed with firecrackers in India

    Pregnant elephant dies after eating pineapple stuffed with firecrackers in India

    A pregnant elephant died in Kerala, India after she allegedly ate a pineapple stuffed with firecrackers. The fruit exploded in her mouth badly damaging her jaw and eventually causing her death.

    The Kerala Forest Department has lodged an FIR (First Information Report) against those responsible for the death of a 15-year-old pregnant wild elephant.

    The Wildlife Warden of the Silent Valley National Park said this was a serious crime whosoever was behind it.

    “We are quite certain that we will find the perpetrators of this crime, which is in no way acceptable at all. It was on the 23rd of last month we came to know about this incident when the elephant was spotted near a water source outside the national park,” said Pachuau.

    As per reports, some people had placed firecrackers inside a pineapple and this was eaten by the wild elephant and in the process of chewing the cracker burst and injured the elephant.

    “We called a veterinarian and later on the 25th, an elephant expert David Abraham came and examined and explained to us the bad situation,” said Pachuau.

    “We informed the Forest officials that its situation was bad and two days later the elephant died in the water.”

    The next day, when we conducted the post-mortem we found a nearly two-month-old fetus. From the uterus, we could make out it was the first pregnancy of the elephant. That sight left many of us deeply sad and moved.

    Only when we conducted the autopsy, we could see that the upper and lower jaw, teeth and tongue of the elephant was badly damaged. The cause of death is due to the aspiration of the lungs as it was filled with water. It was a sad day for many of us,” said Abraham.

    Soon after the autopsy was conducted, the dead elephant was buried in the Forest.

    “Two sets of teams are probing this incident,” added Pachuau.

    Meanwhile, several Bollywood stars including Anushka Sharma and Varun Dhawan condemned the incident and called for harsher laws against animal cruelty.

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