PRESS RELEASES
The press release below is given by Masayuki Sakamoto, who serves as both the chairman of the Asian Conservation Alliance (ACA) and the Secretary General of JWCS. ACA and JWCS have their headquarters in the same building and work together as member organizations.Why do Governments fail to understand the threat to the Royal Thai elephant? Australian and Japanese governments permit the import of live elephants.
Tokyo 22nd July 2005,
ITokyo ? 22nd July 2005,
In one of the most shocking incidents, the Government of Australia has allowed the import of 8 elephants from Thailand on Wednesday, 20th July 2005, and, on Thursday 21st July, 2005 the Royal Government of Thailand has allowed the export of 2 of its Elephants to Japan, rejecting the concerns of policy makers and environmentalists.
Asian Conservation Alliance, a network of 43 NGOfs in Asia and distributed in 14 countries, regards this as one of the major threat to biodiversity of the South East Asian region and believes that this would trigger more illegal trafficking of elephants from nearby regions like Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia.
The chairman of Asian Conservation Alliance, Mr. Masayuki Sakamoto, reiterated the need for continuous efforts on abiding to international environmental policies related to wildlife trade and stressed the importance of species conservation and maintenance in its own habitat. He further said that, Scientific studies have proved that, trying to breed elephants in Australian or Japanese Zoos will not help to save the endangered Asian elephant as it will do nothing to address loss of key habitats, human-animal conflict and illegal poaching.
The United Nations eMillennium ecosystem assessment reportf which was released on the 23rd March 2005 from Tokyo reveals that, over the past few hundred years, humans have increased the species extinction rate by as much as 1000 times and, it further explains that, between 10% and 30% of mammal, bird and amphibian species are threatened with extinction.
As scientific
community has raised the importance of conservation, it is surprising to see
governments making irrational decisions and thus undermining the efforts of any
conservation movement.
Soraida Salwala, steering committee member of ACA and
founder of Friends of the Asian elephant said the move by developed nations to
exploit the wildlife of Asia and particularly, South East Asia is catastrophic
and has no scientific justification. Ms Salwala says she is surprised on why
developed nations like Japan and Australia fail to understand the importance of
conservation of wildlife, especially when illegal poaching in Thailand, Myanmar
and Laos are getting more rampant. The trade demand to rich western nations and
Japan has instigated poachers and illegal mafia to enter into this lucrative
trade.
Asian Conservation Alliance in its earlier report, eThai Elephant trade ? A threat to the CITES implementation processf, released during the CITES CoP 13 meeting in Bangkok last October, had revealed the consequence of live elephant trade. Since then, ACA has been actively campaigning for banning trade of live elephant from Thailand to the developed world.
For personal or
telephonic interviews, please contact
Tokyo: Mr. Masayuki Sakamoto , Chairman, Asian Conservation Alliance Telephone : 0081-3-3595-1171
Bangkok: Ms. Soraida Salwala, ACA Steering committee member , Bangkok, Mobile: +66-1936-3500
Email: acataskforce@hotmail.com