U.S. backs boost for Asian elephants

Numbers of Asian elephants in the wild have plummeted in recent years

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to reauthorize a program spending up to $25 million over the next five years on protecting the Asian elephant.

The legislation, passed 349-23, extends a 1997 law establishing the Asian Elephant Conservation Fund that has so far seen federal money directed at 46 conservation projects in 12 countries.

Urging members of the House to back the bill Rep Wayne Gilchrest (R-Maryland) said the fund was "the only continuous source of money for the Asian elephants."

He said federal money had had "a dramatic positive impact on the ongoing international struggle to save this flagship species from extinction."

According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) there are only 35,000 to 50,000 Asian elephants left in the wild, most of them in India, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.

The elephants, which require a shady forest environment, are threatened by poachers and a growing human population that endangers their habitat.

The WWF says as humans increasingly encroach on elephant's territory it has received several reports of elephants being poisoned by plantation workers and killed in road collisions.

"Elephants and man are in direct competition for the same resources," Representative Jim Saxton told the House (R-New Jersey).

"In most cases, it was the elephants who lost."

The bill, which was passed by the Senate last month, now goes on for final approval to U.S. President George W. Bush.