Was elephant deal an effort to improve upon Night Safaris sagging fortunes?
Re: “Activists protest shipment of elephants”, News, July 31. Frequently, we hear about the government trying to catch criminals attempting to smuggle endangered animals out of the Kingdom. This time round, the news that animal-rights activists tried to block the shipment of eight young elephants to Australia on Saturday night by the Thaksin government came as a jolt. The wildlife activists had reason to suspect the eight animals might have been born in the wild and not in captivity, which could render the shipment in contravention of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Thus, the Thaksin government’s pachyderm shipment risked being condemned as trading in endangered wildlife. Worse, the elephants are alleged to have been part of an exchange for Australia’s koala bears to be put on display at the Chiang Mai Night Safari, PM Thaksin’s multi-billion-baht brainchild project, which is getting deeper and deeper into the red, due to poor attendance. Can we rightly say
