Demand for ‘lucky’ hair puts Vietnam’s elephants in jeopardy
Trade in elephant hairs putting country’s few remaining animals at risk
In a village in Vietnam’s “elephant kingdom”, a vendor holds up a severed, dried tail dotted with coarse hairs she promises will bring good luck – a grim new trade that is endangering the country’s few remaining elephants.
“I’ll cut a hair off right in front of you here, so you can be sure it’s not fake,” said the saleswoman in Tri A village in the country’s forested central highlands.
A fondness for rings and bracelets embedded with elephant hairs is fuelling a worrying fashion fad in a country notorious for its illicit wildlife trade, from rhino horns to pangolin scales, tiger teeth and bear bile.
The trend is putting a strain on the few surviving elephants in Vietnam whose hairs are plucked or tails cut off by poachers, leaving the animals without the crucial appendage used to swat flies and keep their backsides clean.
“The tail is very much a part of body hygiene, so by plucking the hairs out … or cutting the entire lower tail off, you’re putting a handicap on your elephant,” Dionne Slagter, Animal Welfare Manager at Animals Asia, said.
With just 80 elephants left in captivity and about 100 in the wild – down from as many as 2,000 in 1990 – Slagter suspects most of the tails are being smuggled in from neighbouring countries or as far afield as Africa.
