Elephants kick drug habit

As many elephants are hunted in Africa to feed the international demand for ivory, a smaller number of these animals in Asia fall in the traps of drug dealers.

Four elephants living in the tropical forests on the China-Myanmar border became drug addicts after being fed heroin by drug dealers. After quitting the habit with the help of human, now they live in the forests of Yunnan Province, Southwest China, which is a haven for wild animals. The province is home to more than 250 wild Asiatic elephants, accounting for 90 percent of all wild elephants in China.

Drug dealers fed the four elephants with bananas dipped with heroin in order to tame them for use in drug trafficking. They were rescued by Chinese police in 2005 and sent to Hainan, an island in South China, to quit their narcotics habit. When they were first seized by police, the elephants were in the grip of the drugs, and were nearly uncontrollable.

Having no experience in treating elephant drug addiction, veterinarians adopted the same methods used to treat human drug addicts. The elephants underwent three months of drug substitution, followed by almost a year of rehabilitation.

In 2007, after successfully completing their lengthy recoveries, they were sent back to the forests of Yunnan.

On the whole, wild elephants are well protected in Yunnan compared with countries like Laos where hunting is allowed. Over the past two decades, the number of Asiatic elephants in Yunnan has roughly doubled, thanks to official feeding programs, wildlife education efforts and strict protection laws. Convicted poachers in China face the death penalty.

However, Yunnan's elephants still face the challenge of shrinking habitat. With Yunnan's forests rapidly giving way to rubber and other cash crops, the country's half-dozen or so elephant families have become marooned in disconnected preserves.