Letter from Burma: trunk work

I have a passion for elephants. From time to time I have ridden one – as tourists do – but I wanted to see them working and from Toungoo, south of ^{Mandalay in Burma, I could: here there are 56 working elephants.}

My first pleasant surprise was that I would be riding one. Her name was Aye Min and I could watch proceedings from her high vantage point. The day was perfect: no rain, no sun, not too hot: idyllic elephant-watching weather.

I learned from Aye Min's sin oozie that domesticated elephants are not good breeders. They bear on average one calf every seven or eight years and some females never bear a calf. So villagers catch young wild elephants, and train them. They start work when they are 14 or 15. By 60, they no longer haul timber, but remain in the village doing odd jobs.

As a rule, the elephants are let loose at night to forage in the jungle. They plaster themselves with mud against insect bites, so the sin oozie must bathe his mount each morning before they start work. We watched as he made his elephant comfortable with several layers of softened tree bark and then a cradle. Contrary to what I imagined, the cradle was not for the sin oozie to sit on. It is for attaching chains – essential to haul the logs.

I found there were three stages to cutting down and bringing out logs. First they cut, pulled and pushed from the top to halfway down the mountain. Only when the top timber was clear did they start on the second stage. You can't have tree trunks weighing 3,000kg, with a diameter of perhaps a metre, rolling at top speed down the mountainside. The second stage was to cut and pull down to the shallow stream. The last stage seemed the easiest - pulling the timber along the stream, but then the elephants had to climb the steep slope to the village, trudging their way back through knee-high mud.

Four elephants joined Aye Min and silently gazed ahead. They were watching the sin gaung, or elephant group leader. He was measuring the felled trees seemingly to match the size, strength and capability of each elephant. A youth, with nothing on his feet, stepped up beside the sin gaung and revved the chainsaw. I jumped but the elephants were used to the noise. The sin gaung rolled a short piece of cut timber to one side and the barefoot chainsaw youth attached the chains to the nearest elephant. Her oozie bounced up and down on her head shouting encouragement. He made clicking noises that the elephants can understand. With a thunderous bellow and tail horizontal, the elephant heaved forward: the log was on its way.

Elephants can consume up to 500kg of vegetation every 24 hours. But recently, poachers have been killing elephants here for their tusks, skin and trunks. The police caught one poacher but until the rest are found, the elephants must stay safely in their villages at night. Only then will they be allowed to return to the jungle and eat their fill.

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http://www.information.myanmaronlinecentre.com/letter-from-burma-trunk-work/