The skeletons of two wild adult elephants that were found dead in Yok Don National Park in the central highlands province of Dak Lak on August 25 will be preserved as specimens to be displayed at the Forest Resources Museum of Vietnam at the request of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

>> Two elephants killed in national park

Meanwhile, urgent measures are also required to protect the small population of remaining elephants in the locality.

The ministry has asked Dak Lak authorities to identify the killers of the ill-fated elephants as soon as possible.

On August 25, national park patrollers discovered the decomposed bodies of the two elephants, one male and one female, in subzone 257.

A part of the male’s proboscis and some facial bones had been removed from its body, said Tran Van Thanh, the park’s director.

The animals were believed to have been killed for their tusks.

Statistics released by the national elephant conservation center show 19 elephants have been killed since 2009. In the first eight months of this year alone, five wild elephants were killed by poachers.

With the skeletons of the dead elephants to be kept as specimens, there will be 19 examples of elephants on display at the Forest Resources Museum of Vietnam - a number that will surely surprise any visitor to the museum.

Many people have voiced concerns over the recent killing of the two elephants, because one of them was the only adult male among a herd of 29 wild elephants that occasionally appears in the park. His death will definitely impact the reproduction of the herd.

Although wild elephants are increasingly threatened by poaching and habitat loss, the conservation project for the animals has been plagued by bureaucratic delays as the Elephant Conservation Center has yet to be provided with land needed to build a hospital and area for elephant reproduction, among other construction works.

When the center asked for 200 hectares in Yok Don National Park to build a conservation center for wild elephants, the General Directorate of Forestry did not approve the grant.

Afterwards, the center switched to demanding general forest land with the same area for the conservation center and the People’s Committee of Dak Lak province accepted its policy. However, thus far the center has yet to receive any land or capital from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development for the construction.

In 2006 the Vietnamese government approved an urgent action plan during the period of 2006-2010 to preserve elephants in three provinces, Nghe An, Dak Lak and Dong Nai, where the mammals are critically threatened. In 2010, Dak Lak’s People’s Committee approved an elephant conservation project for 2010-2015 with a budget of VND61 billion (roughly US$3 million). More recently, Dak Lak authorities were required to add amendments and changes to the conservation project through 2020 that has to be submitted to Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung for approval before September 15.

It’s necessary to keep the skeletons of dead elephants as specimens to raise public awareness of the urgent need to protect the animals, but many people doubt the efficacy of this method as more elephants continue to be killed for tusks while conservation projects are stuck on paper.