Vietnam is to award owners of female elephants 20,000 dollars for every calf their animals produce to boost the plummeting numbers of pachyderms, an official said Friday. "This is a part of an elephant conservation project approved last month," said Y Rit Buon Ya, vice director of the Agriculture and Rural Development Department in the central province of Dak Lak and head of its Forest Protection Division. Under the 60-billion-dong (2.9-million-dollar) project, all domestic elephants are to get a free health checkup once a year. Owners of any cows who give birth would receive 414 million dong to cover care during the pregnancy, labour and the calf's infancy. Not all breeders are persuaded, though, saying that conditions were still unsuitable for elephants to reproduce. "The reward is good, but we prefer to have forests to help elephants reproduce," said an elephant breeder in Dak Lak. "How can elephants reproduce without living in nature?" The numbers of captive-bred elephants has plummeted from 500 to 50 in the past three decades in the province, which has about 80 per cent of the country's domestic elephants and 50 of its estimated nation-wide population of 80 wild pachyderms. Dan Nang Long, who has a domestic herd of more than 10 elephants and gives tourists rides, said elephants do not breed well in captivity because of a lack of suitable mating conditions, poor health care and shortages of fodder. Elephants like to eat more than 100 kilograms of foliage per day. Long said his most recent elephant birth was in 1992, and the calf only lived three months because he did not have the expertise to care for it.
