Camera traps in Vũ Quang National Park in central Hà Tĩnh Province recently captured pictures of elephants, affirming the existence of the giant mammal.
Photo of an elephant captured by camera traps in Hà Tĩnh national park. Photo courtesy of Vũ Quang National Park
According to the park’s deputy director, Nguyễn Thượng Hải, the park is going to survey the number of elephants in the herd, which were discovered through the cameras and by residents living near the park’s buffer zones.
In recent weeks, rangers followed residents’ reports and found elephant footprints in the park forest, including both mature and baby elephant footprints.
The footprints were scattered across three sites at the park, and rangers could not identify if they were footprints of elephants from the same herd or from different herds.
Later, the rangers set up camera traps and captured photos of two mature elephants. Hải said the survey will be conducted in a forest area of 20,000ha in 25 zones of the park near the province’s Hương Khê and Vũ Quang districts in order to affirm the presence of elephants.
The park will then set up a protection plan to take care of the rare mammals.
In related news, rangers in Hương Sơn District last Saturday released eight masked palm civets (Paguma larvata) and seven giant Asian pond turtles (Heosemys grandis) back to nature.
Earlier, rangers patrolled the district and caught Nguyễn Văn Thịnh, a local, carrying the civets and turtles to be sold as food. They seized the animals and fined Thịnh VNĐ12 million (US$529).
The animals were rehabilitated before being released into the wild. Vietnamese laws prohibit the hunting, trading, transporting, storing and killing of wild animals. — VNS
The elephant footprints found at the park. Photo courtesy by Vũ Quang National Park