U.N. sees world climate change deal in 2009

Andrew Hay, Reuters 4 May 08;

MADRID (Reuters) - The world can reach a significant new climate change pact by the end of 2009 if current talks keep up their momentum, the head of the United Nations climate panel said on Sunday.

The United Nations began negotiations on a sweeping new pact in March after governments agreed last year to work out a treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol by the end of next year.

"If this momentum continues you will get an agreement that is not too full of compromises," said Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, during a seminar at the Asian Development Bank annual meeting in Madrid.

Without a deal to cap greenhouse gas emissions around 2015, then halve them by 2050, the world will face ever more droughts, heatwaves, floods and rising seas, according to the U.N. panel.

The United Nations hopes to go beyond Kyoto by getting all countries to agree to curbs on emissions of greenhouse gases that fuel global warming.

Only 37 rich nations were bound to cut emissions under Kyoto. The United States, one of the world's biggest polluters, refused to join the agreement.

The next talks, to be held in Germany in June, will address funding technology to mitigate climate change -- a key demand from developing countries who say rich countries should foot much of the bill.

Getting the private sector on board with a well regulated carbon emissions trading system is key to long-term financing, according to delegates at the ADB seminar.

"Investors need some certainty they will get some return," said Simon Brooks, vice president at the European Investment Bank.

PRESTIGE AND POLITICS

India's Pachauri said popular awareness of global warming had risen sharply over the last 12 months and put pressure on Washington and other governments for action.

He said he believed it would be very difficult for any country to remain outside a climate change pact.

"There's a question of national prestige involved," said Pachauri, head of the U.N. panel that last year shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former President Al Gore.

President George W. Bush pulled the United States out of Kyoto in 2001, saying the pact would hurt the economy and was unfair since it excluded big developing nations from committing to emissions cuts.

Key to a new agreement is Asia, notably China, said Odin Knudsen, a managing director for JP Morgan & Chase.

"China is making tremendous progress," said Knudsen, a specialist in climate change. "It's in China's interests and they want to be energy efficient."

In the last 3 decades Asia's energy consumption has grown 230 percent and the region has gone from producing one tenth of world greenhouse gas emissions, to a quarter, according to the Asian Development Bank.

The United Nations calculates global warming will cause a 30 percent decline in crop yields in central and south Asia by 2050 and decrease freshwater availability for over a billion people.

Faced with such threats, China is switching over to renewable energy sources which are expected to provide more than 30 percent of its power needs by 2050, according to the United Nations.

(Reporting by Andrew Hay; Editing by Charles Dick)

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Sea turtles almost gone from Andaman coast

MCOT News 4 May 08;

Scenes of releasing young sea turtles back into the sea are common. However, whether these little creatures will be able to survive or not also depends on the environment.

According to the Marine and Coastal Resources Development and Research Center, statistics showed the number of sea turtles coming to Thailand’s Andaman shores to lay their eggs has dropped dramatically. There were only 10-20 nests per year, decreasing from up to 1,000 nests in the past.

“The situation is worrying. In the past five decades, the number of sea turtles has dropped five fold. Beaches in Phangna and Phuket used to be places for sea turtles to lay eggs. Now, there are only 20 or so nests per year.”, said Kongkiert Kitiwatcharawong, academic.

The Olive Ridley turtle is at risk of extinction and are now rarely seen coming ashore to lay eggs. The major cause is the over- development of coastal areas for tourism. Leatherback sea turtles also used to be found on Phuket’s Mai Khao beach.

Human influence affects coastal areas where sea turtles live for six months before landing ashore shore to lay eggs. In the near future, sea turtles might disappear from Thailand’s Andaman coast.

“Naturally, sea turtles will return to the same place they usually come to lay eggs. But they will not return if the place is not safe for them anymore. They will find a new, better place.”, said Kongkiert.

More sea turtles are choosing to lay their eggs on beaches in Myanmar and Malaysia as there is little human intrusion. As a result, sea turtle conservation efforts are not only increasing their numbers but also providing them with a good environment suitable for their living and reproduction.

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Malaysian palm oil struggles to promote 'green' image

Ivy Sam, Yahoo News 4 May 08;

Malaysia is promoting its controversial palm oil industry as a model of eco-friendliness, but activists warn forests are still being destroyed to make way for vast plantations.

As palm oil prices boom, Malaysia has mounted a campaign to counter allegations that the crop is responsible for habitat destruction, air pollution from slash-and-burn farming, and pushing orangutans towards extinction.

It insists palm oil is only grown on legal agricultural land and that criticisms are an attempt by competitors in Europe and the United States to undermine growing demand for the commodity.

But environmentalists say that while virgin rainforests are now off-limits, tracts designated as "secondary forests", which are also valuable habitats teeming with wildlife, are not being spared.

Junaidi Payne from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said the government's stance is misleading and that the race to fulfil demand for palm oil risks causing further deforestation, both legal and illegal.

"It is actually a red herring to say that Malaysia does not convert rainforests to oil palm plantations," Payne said at a recent conference on palm oil sustainability in Sabah state on Borneo island.

Payne said that in the past 25 years, previously virgin forests which have been partially logged were downgraded to secondary forests, which are then deemed to be legal agriculture land.

"What bothers me is the current sustained price of crude palm oil," he said. "The success of palm oil production will have an impact on forest conservation as more land is set aside to cultivate the crop."

The charismatic orangutan, the flagship species for the forest conservation drive, is found only in Borneo -- which is shared between Indonesia and Malaysia -- and Indonesia's Sumatra island.

An estimated 41,000 orangutans live on Borneo, including Indonesia's Kalimantan and Malaysia's Sabah and Sarawak states, while Sumatra is home to 7,500 Sumatran orangutans, a sub-species of the red-haired ape.

The gentle animal is now threatened with extinction due to a loss of natural habitat, say experts who point out that most of Malaysia's orangutans live in secondary forests.

The Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) has vigorously fended off the allegations, pointing out that 60 percent of Malaysia's land mass is forested, while agriculture occupies just 19 percent.

"Every country has the right to develop 30 percent of their forest land to agriculture. So what is the issue?" MPOC chief executive officer Yusof Basiron told AFP.

"Records show that the UK has knowingly developed 70 percent of its land for agriculture, leaving less than 12 percent under forest," he said.

"Nobody asks the UK government to reverse the situation even though over-developed agricultural land can be easily reforested to help reduce global warming."

As palm oil prices spiral, driven by demand for clean-burning biofuels as well as for an ingredient in food and cosmetics, Malaysia and Indonesia are jockeying for top-dog status as the world's largest producer.

Malaysia says Indonesia likely seized its mantle as the world's biggest palm oil producer in 2007, due to dramatically increased planting. The two countries combined supply 85 percent of the world's palm oil.

Environmental campaigners Friends of the Earth in 2005 called for a boycott of palm oil products, predicting that orangutans would be wiped out within 12 years if forest destruction were to continue at current levels.

The adverse public opinion poses a threat to an industry which last year earned Malaysia 14.1 billion dollars in exports, a whopping 42 percent jump from 2006. That figure is tipped to rise to 15.7 billion dollars this year.

Indonesia and Malaysia have pledged to carry out joint research to counter anti-palm oil "propaganda" that jeopardises the lucrative industry.

"We will present accurate facts to all those who are against palm oil, whether for economic reasons, or due to concerns over global warming or because they are agents to palm oil competitors," said Malaysian Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Peter Chin.

WWF's Borneo-based researcher Darrel Webber said the situation is much more serious in Indonesia, where deforestation is rampant.

"In Malaysia there is more awareness and cooperation between planters and conservation groups. The situation is much more acute in Kalimantan and Sumatra," he said.

Webber said Malaysian palm oil can be sustainable if industry players are willing to conserve animal habitats and work around indigenous communities, instead of fragmenting forested areas.

"It is important to note that palm oil is the only commodity that is going for such a thing as sustainable production. It is a real challenge but it is viable," he said.

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Farmers face climate challenge in quest for more food

David Fogarty, Reuters 3 May 08;

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - If farmers think they have a tough time producing enough rice, wheat and other grain crops, global warming is going to present a whole new world of challenges in the race to produce more food, scientists say.

In a warmer world beset by greater extremes of droughts and floods, farmers will have to change crop management practices, grow tougher plant varieties and be prepared for constant change in the way they operate, scientists say.

"There certainly are going to be lots of challenges in the future. Temperature is one of them, water is another," said Lisa Ainsworth, a molecular biologist with the United States Department of Agriculture.

Spiraling grain prices in recent months have startled governments long used to affordable rice, wheat, soy and maize.

But rising demand and likely greater climate variability and more fluctuations in crop output could mean even more uncertainty for prices.

Current estimates suggest demand for cereals will jump by more than 50 percent by 2050 as the world's population rises from 6.6 billion to about 9 billion.

The world has already warmed by about 0.7 degrees Celsius on average since the 1800s and studies show higher temperatures can cut yields, particularly in the tropics where a lot of rice is grown.

"In Northeastern China, low temperatures, a short growing season and lack of water limit production, so rising temperatures in the future may have beneficial impacts there," said Ainsworth.

"However, in the southern parts of the country, higher temperatures will likely cause yield losses," she told Reuters.

Pollution is another threat. Ozone, which is produced at ground-level by sunlight interacting with pollution from burning fossil fuels, can cut plant productivity. The higher the ozone levels, the worse the damage.

In the northern hemisphere, ozone is a growing problem and is estimated to cost farmers billions of dollars in lost production.

"In the major rice-growing regions, which are India and China, ground-level ozone concentrations even today are very high and certainly exceed the threshold for damage. Ozone is already decreasing yield potential in many areas," Ainsworth said.

Rice is grown in more than 100 countries. More than half the world's population rely on it as their main food source.

HEAT STRESS

A major U.N. climate panel report last year said in low-latitude regions, even moderate temperature rises of between 1 and 2 degrees Celsius could trim crop yields.

In cooler mid to high-latitude regions, localized increases up to 3 degrees Celsius plus higher amounts of carbon dioxide in the air could be beneficial to yields, provided there was enough water.

But anything beyond 3 degrees locally would be bad for crop yields, said the panel's Fourth Assessment Report on the impacts of climate change, which drew on the expertise of hundreds of scientists from around the world.

Studies show that higher carbon dioxide levels, on their own, can boost rice and wheat production but any benefit is negated by the stress caused by higher temperatures, lack of water from changes in rainfall patterns and pollution.

Plants breathe in CO2 to make sugars and other complex compounds grow. Carbon dioxide levels from burning fossil fuels are rising rapidly and are now the highest than at any time in the past 650,000 years.

Last year, they reached near 390 parts per million from about 280 ppm at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Unless nations drastically rein in their carbon emissions, the level could reach 550 ppm by 2050, the climate panel says, leading to sharp increases in temperatures, particularly at higher latitudes.

The trick for farmers is to adapt, and scientists say the crops of the coming decades will have to be very different.

"We will see a suite of new traits that are integrated into the varieties that are planted in the future," said Ainsworth.

"This is something we do need to start soon because anything that we hope to develop today probably won't be in the field until 2018 and the climate then will be very different."

In the Philippines, the International Rice Research Institute has a long history of developing rice varieties. But the pace of climate change in the future is a big worry.

NEED TO BREED

"There is still a lot of uncertainty in the climate modeling when it comes to the regional level," said Reiner Wassmann of IRRI. But it was clear temperatures would rise.

"The other mega trend we see is that we will have more climate extremes. In some places there might be more drought, in others it may be submergence, from floods, in some places it might be both," said Wassmann, coordinator of the Rice and Climate Change Consortium at IRRI.

"That is really a new challenge for development of cropping systems and I don't want to limit it to only plant breeding. We have to be clear that this is no silver bullet and that if we speed-up plant breeding everything will be fine. Certainly not.

"We also have to improve crop management and water saving techniques have come into the picture to cope with drought," he said.

In major wheat grower Australia, higher temperatures will threaten crop yields, depending on the location. But it will be changes in rainfall that are likely to have the biggest impact.

"A rise of up to 2 degrees Celsius, that by itself could be coped with. The much bigger problem is what happens to rainfall," said Mark Howden, a senior scientist with Australia's state-backed research body the CSIRO.

"Once we get above a 10-15 percent reduction in rainfall we start to get into negative conditions for everything," he said.

"Under those circumstances we would see major declines in wheat production even allowing for the technological improvements that we've got under our belts that we could use," said Howden, theme leader of the CSIRO's climate adaptation program.

If the world keeps on emitting greenhouse gases at the present rate, computer models suggest southern Australia will become much drier.

"We will need to think about smart ways of feeding the world," said Howden, who called for more investment for research by government and industry.

"We are looking at a requirement to double agricultural production by 2050, so this isn't the time when we have the luxury of cutting back our agriculture. We're on a treadmill (and) we need to keeping running faster and faster."

(Editing by Megan Goldin)

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Africa's biggest oil producer goes green

Jacques Lhuillery, Yahoo News 4 May 08;

In his office in Lagos, Alain Salleras, a Frenchman of about 50 for whom biofuels are something of a crusade, is working away at his pet project -- producing ethanol from sweet sorghum in Nigeria.

Salleras, executive director of Global Biofuels Ltd, which has partnered with India's Praj Industries and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) for its project, is at pains to pre-empt any questions on the growing controversy over the alleged impact of biofuels on agriculture.

"Contrary to manioc, sorghum, of which Nigeria is the world's leading producer, has no impact on food supply," Salleras emphasised.

Indeed, if he is to be believed, sweet sorghum has only advantages over sugar cane, another crop often grown for biofuels.

He says sorghum requires one quarter of the water that sugar cane needs, it produces two or three harvests a year, you get far more ethanol per hectare under cultivation -- nearly four times as much in fact -- and there is no wastage.

"To make the ethanol we only take the stalks, which are rich in sugar. The grains go for food and the rest for animal fodder," he says.

Even the fibrous residue from the crushed stalks, known as "bagasse," is recycled. This biomass is boiled to produce steam to make electricity.

Global Biofuels has taken on a Nigerian specialist Babatunde Obilana, who spent 20 years with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), working notably on Zimbabwe and Kenya.

Salleras, a former executive with French construction company Vinci, the former Société Générale d'Entreprises, and compatriot Jean Lamoliatte aim to be producing their first litre of sorghum-based Nigerian ethanol next summer.

In Ondo state to the west of Lagos the sorghum seeds have been sown at Arigidi Akoko and the processing plant will be built by Praj Industries, a biofuels technology company.

Initally Salleras is expecting daily production of 9,000 litres. That is estimated to rise to 240,000 litres a day when the full 10,000 hectares of sweet sorghum are ready for harvest.

By this summer 300 hectares will be ready for harvest and by April or May of next year between 3,000 and 6,000 will be ready.

This is still a far cry from the 30 million litres of fuel consumed every day in Nigeria, but the boss of Global Biofuels has big ambitions.

In three to five years' time he is aiming to produce five percent of Nigeria's total consumption, that is around 1.5 million litres a day.

Global Biofuels plans to establish seven ethanol refineries, each with an associated plant for livestock feed production, in various parts of Nigeria. Each refinery/feed plant will jointly employ 8,000 Nigerians and create an additional 40,000 indirect jobs, the company says.

"It's the first in a long series of projects, in line with the Kyoto Protocol engagements which stipulate that by 2020 10 percent of energy consumed must be of non-fossile origin," Salleras explained.

Construction work on the second of the seven plants will start in June in Ekiti, a state sharing a common border with Ondo.

The Ondo state project alone represents an investment of some 70 million dollars, 65 percent of which is from private investors. The rest will be financed by credits.

NNPC has undertaken to buy all Global Biofuels' production in Nigeria and plans to use it for automobile fuel and for powering breweries and pharmaceuticals plants.

Nigeria, which despite being Africa's biggest oil producer, suffers from a chronic fuel shortage, is counting on biofuels to help solve the problem.

NNPC in 2005 created a Renewable Energy Division (RED) tasked with developping biofuels from manioc or sugar cane, two crops that are abundant in Nigeria.

The unit aims to have a prosperous national biofuels industry up and running by the middle of 2012.

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Best of our wild blogs: 4 May 08

Young blogger shares about Dugong Ambassador event
an exciting walk and painting session on shanil's blog

Cyrene clips
clip of mating common sea stars and the New Star Pentaceraster mammillatus and unidentified sea anemone and stars on collision course on the sgbeachbum blog

Banded woodpecker antics
on the bird ecology blog

The Fallen Shall Thrive
lessons in resilience on the art in the wetlands blog

Secret Shores for the Biodiversity Talk Series
a wonderful audience at the talk on the wildfilms blog

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Is a cat killer on the loose in Pasir Ris?

Three cats die from suspected thinner dousing
Straits Times 4 May 08;

On Friday night, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) received a call about a mother cat and two kittens. They could have been doused with either thinner or acid. One of them had died.

By the time the SPCA staff reached Block 253 in Pasir Ris Street 21 half an hour later, another cat had died and the third one was struggling violently. Both the cats that died had blood in their mouths and nostrils. The third cat was rushed to a veterinarian and had to be put down.

A broken bottle labelled thinner was found nearby.

A Sunday Times check with residents yesterday revealed that this was the first time they had come across such an incident.

The SPCA is offering a $1,000 reward for information that will lead to the arrest and prosecution of anyone involved in the incident. Call 6287-5355, extention 9.

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41 hot spots in detected in southern Sumatra

BMG detects 41 spots in southern part of Sumatra
Antara 2 May 08;

Medan, North Sumatra (ANTARA News) - The southern part of Sumatra now has 41 hot spots with the potential of triggering forest fires, the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) station in Medan said.

"Therefore, we call on the public there to be alert to the possibility of forest fires breaking out," a BMG analyst, Agus Syafril, told ANTARA News here on Friday.

Through monitoring via the NOA 41 satellite, it had been established that the hot spots were located in the provinces of Jambi, Bengkulu and Lampung.

He said, the number of hot spots had increased because the southern part of Sumatra was entering the dry season which was estimated to last until October this year.

"At present, the southern part of Sumatra which lies just south of the equator has entered the dry season so that it is having very little rain. This has caused more hot spots to appear," he said.

In view of the increased risk of forest fires, the BMG called on companies and local people in the three provinces intending to burn bushes for whatever purpose to take extra measures to localize the resulting fires so that they would not spread to nearby forests.

In addition, relevant government agencies in the three provinces were expected to keep a tighter watch over local forests to minimize the possibilty of fires breaking out in them, he said. (*)

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Volvo Ocean Race's organisers hope to double global viewership

Channel NewsAsia 3 May 08;

While in Singapore, the boats will also have two In-port races, off the East Coast.

SINGAPORE : The Volvo Ocean race will be headed to Asia for the first time this season, and the yachts competing will stop in China, India and Singapore.

The organisers are planning to double the global viewership from two billion in the previous race, to four billion this year.

The Volvo Ocean Race is one of the toughest races in the open waters. And for the first time, organisers have decided to include Asia for the new season starting in October.

They are also planning a host of new initiatives. More programmes are also being included this season to raise awareness of how exciting the race is, which is on par with the Formula One race, in terms of size.

And with new media, the race and its latest adventures will be brought right into the homes of audiences all over the world. There will be a website and for the first time, a broadband TV site, which is accessible to all.

Reg Gratton, Communications Director, Volvo Ocean Race, said: "It's almost real time now and we can get video conference calls, blogging... the communication from the boats will be (on) high definition cameras. So I think the feeling that the race disappears after it leaves, say Singapore, to go to Qingdao, is just not the case any more."

MediaCorp will also be showing 39 weekly documentary programmes, which will give an update of the race as it progresses.

Organisers are also looking at getting educational institutions involved in the race when it comes to Singapore in December.

There are plans to recruit some 30 media studies students to help run the media centre. And hopefully these students will consider sports journalism as a future career.

Organisers said preparations for the Singapore stopover are on track. The boats will be here for more than three weeks, as they are due for repairs, after arriving from India and before heading to China.

While in Singapore, the boats will also have two In-port races, off the East Coast.

Rob Turnbull, Chief Operating Officer, One15 Singapore Ocean Race, said: "If we can get anywhere between 3,000 to 4,000 people... maybe not so much on water, they can be at viewing points near the water, I think will be... good."

The seven boats that are competing will leave Alicante in Spain in October and are due to arrive in Singapore a few days before Christmas. - CNA/ms

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New residential buildings in Singapore must now meet minimum standards for energy efficiency

Channel NewsAsia 3 May 08;

SINGAPORE: New residential properties must now include basic environment-friendly features before the building plans are approved.

This is a requirement introduced on 15 April by the Building and Construction Authority (BCA).

Under the new guidelines, BCA has set a limit on the amount of heat that can enter a residential building through its facade. This limit is called the Residential Envelope Transmittance Value. Such a criterion already exists for commercial properties.

A house with floor-to-ceiling glass designs and little concrete all around. Such a look has become increasingly popular among private residential properties in Singapore.

The full-height window design exudes an air of elegance and makes the rooms look larger. But such a design is not environmentally-friendly.

".....because during the day, a lot of heat will be trapped inside the unit and when you turn on the air-conditioning, it'll work harder than normal," said BCA's deputy director for technology development, Ang Kian Seng.

This is why the BCA hopes that designers will incorporate 'green' features at the planning stage.

Today, more than 30 residential properties in Singapore have floor-to-ceiling glass designs. The BCA says such architecture is not suitable for a tropical country like Singapore.

In fact, if architects use less glass in their designs, they could actually save more money in overall construction costs. Consumers would then stand to benefit.

BCA's Mr Ang said: "Typically in a residential unit, 60 percent of the electricity bills will have to be used for air-conditioning. So with this (heat limit) requirement, typically you're looking at 10-20 percent kind of savings for the home owner....With our buildings properly designed....that can go a long way to delay the construction of a power plant, for example......instead of wasting energy and the load goes up, you may need a plant earlier than before."

So a 'greener' home now is a practical step towards a healthier environment in future. - CNA/ir

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New warnings sought in Taiwan for shark fin dishes

The China Post 3 May 08;

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Legislators urged the Department of Health (DOH) to require that restaurants serving dishes with shark fins provide warnings cautioning pregnant women not to eat the prized ingredient, which can contain dangerous levels of mercury.

Ruling Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tien Chiu-chin said at a news conference attended by lawmakers from across the political spectrum that shark finning is not only cruel, but also a main cause of the rapid decline of global shark populations.

According to Tien, it is common practice for many foreign fishing vessels to remove the fins from captured sharks and then throw the sharks back into the sea because their meat is worth little and the fishermen want to leave room on board for more of the valuable fins.

When returned to the ocean, the finless sharks, unable to move, either die gradually or are consumed by other sharks, Tien added.

The lawmaker warned that sharks are at the top of the ocean food chain and their consumption of tainted small fish and organisms has left a number of them contaminated by mercury.

As a result, Tien said, random surveys conducted by local environmental groups show that some shark fins sold on the market contain mercury, which could pose a health hazard to consumers.

She therefore called on local residents not to order shark fin dishes when hosting banquets to avoid endangering their own health and the health of their guests and prevent ecological destruction.

Meanwhile, Tien said the DOH should stipulate that shark fin restaurants add warnings reminding pregnant women, women trying to have a baby and breast-feeding women not to eat dishes with shark fins in them.

Tien said she was happy to receive confirmation that shark fin dishes will not be served at the Presidential Inauguration state banquet on May 20.

In response to the lawmakers' suggestion, DOH official Hsieh Tien-hung said once a consensus is reached at the agency, it will instruct restaurants throughout the country in writing to add warnings for dishes with shark fins.

He added, however, that details, such as what the warnings should say, are still being discussed.

DPP Legislator Twu Shiing-jer also suggested that the DOH print posters to inform people that eating shark fins could possibly have a negative influence on their intelligence.

They could also provide information on international regulations related to shark finning and data on levels of contamination in shark products, he said.

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Thailand's elephants: Someone Isn't Enjoying the Ride

Mike Snow, The Washington Post 4 May 08;

GOLDEN TRIANGLE, Thailand

At Anantara elephant camp, I met Boon Rot, all 10 feet and three or so tons of her, as she breakfasted on bamboo stalks. I'd come to the resort to take part in mahout, or elephant handler, training, and Boon Rot was my assigned animal. Until recently, she'd had the misfortune of roaming Bangkok's red-light districts, exploited for novelty value by her mahout, who sold tourists and other amused onlookers bananas to feed her.

Her rescue by Anantara's "director of elephants," John Roberts, meant that she'd be riding tourists around instead. Not the perfect solution, former elephant conservationist Roberts acknowledged, but a big improvement for this 17-year-old tusker, who would no longer have to face down cars, drunks and other dangers of the concrete jungle.

Long revered for their intelligence and sensitivity, elephants are Thailand's national animal. Elephant Day is celebrated on March 13. A white elephant appeared on the country's flag until 1917. The animals once paraded members of the royal family, served as super-weapons in Southeast Asian armies and worked in the forests, hauling logs for the Thai lumber trade.

But encroaching civilization and a 1989 ban on logging sent the pachyderm population into a tailspin. From about 100,000 at the turn of the 20th century, its numbers have steadily dwindled to a meager head count, as of last June, of 3,456 domesticated animals and another 1,000 or so in the wild. These latter face an increasingly bleak future, hunted both by vengeful farmers whose crops they sometimes ruin and by ivory hunters who covet their tusks.

Though about 300 elephants still live on the streets of Thai cities, Boon Rot and the more fortunate of her peers have found a way station at trekking camps such as Anantara. These camps are highly popular with tourists, but many are notorious among animal rights groups, which say that they are maltreating the creatures. This was something I didn't learn until after my camp experience, but it left me with a decidedly mixed feeling about the whole thing.

Boon Rot seemed impossibly huge, and the thought of mounting her gave me the heebie-jeebies. But after hoisting myself up and coiling my legs around her massive neck, I realized that she was something of a pussycat. Riding her turned out to be easier than it looked. As we plodded along the trail, I gradually lost my fear of falling off. Class ended on a high note when we students removed our tennis shoes and waded into a river on our elephants for a refreshing swim. After climbing back onto the riverbank, the animals returned our shoes, one at a time, with their trunks. We rewarded them with bananas and then posed for a final round of picture-taking. Marj, a British tourist who suffered from multiple sclerosis, called the experience "one of the best things I ever did."

The riding was certainly exhilarating. But is it the best thing for the elephants? A look into the crinkly, soulful eyes of Boon Rot and her peers leaves little doubt that serving tourists at Anantara, a kind of halfway house for elephants attached to a five-star resort, beats sleeping beneath garbage-strewn highway underpasses. But the elephant camps aren't all equal.

Anantara, run by the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation, appears to offer one of the better elephant programs, promoting wildlife conservation and the preservation of rural life, and offering mahouts and their families a chance to earn a living wage. It also caters to high-end tourists and is therefore well funded. But elephants eat 10 percent of their body weight daily, so many camps that operate on the margin feel pressured to work their pachyderms hard to cover the cost of their upkeep.

Most complaints of elephant abuse focus on the way the animals are tamed. Anantara employs a humane but time-consuming "tickling" method, but many camps still use phaajaan (the Thai word for "crush"), a method of domesticating baby elephants that has been practiced in Thailand for thousands of years. This ceremony involves separating youngsters from their mothers, tying them up in a confined space, jabbing them with knives, heated irons, burning cigarettes and bamboo sticks embedded with nails, pummeling them with stones and other projectiles and depriving them of food, water and sleep. It lasts for up to six days, until a shaman senses that the elephant's spirit is broken. Afterward, the animal is never again permitted to see its mother.

Animal rights groups condemn not only the phaajaans but also "imprisoning" the animals and training them to perform tricks. "Elephants don't have to dance, paint pictures or roll logs," says Ashley Furno, senior campaign coordinator for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). "We're interested in protecting them so that they can remain in the wild, free to spend their days foraging for food, bathing and interacting with their families and other elephants." In 2003, PETA mounted an ongoing Asia-wide ad campaign protesting elephant abuse that has garnered attention in Germany, Sweden, Singapore, the United Kingdom and other countries that have traditionally contributed to Thai tourism.

But because the elephant camps are privately run, Thai officials find it difficult to address abuses. Moreover, repeated turnover in governments -- there have been three in 20 months -- means that any high-level directives don't stick for long, and interest in the issue waxes and wanes. Officials have focused for the most part on providing limited veterinary care. A project sponsored by the queen to send elephants back into the wild has had measured success, but Soraida Salwala, founder of the private group Friends of the Asian Elephant, charges that government support for the sale of other elephants to Australian zoos for a scientific breeding program helps promote the wildlife trade.

The best hope for Thailand's elephants would be government backing for sanctuaries such as Elephant Nature Park and Elephant Haven, two private, nonprofit sanctuaries near the Burmese border that were established by animal rights activist Sangduen "Lek" Chailert to allow elephants to live in a protected natural setting. Their exemplary work has riled those unhappy at the prospect of replacing phaajaans with more time-consuming breaking methods and has earned Chailert death threats, but also recognition by Time magazine as a "hero of Asia." Similar sanctuaries have long operated in Africa.

A system of national parks could provide Thailand and its tourist industry another valuable revenue stream. But the biggest payoff would be helping replenish the once robust population of Asian elephants, now only about one-tenth the size of Africa's (which numbers between 470,000 and 690,000, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources).

Without sufficient funding and official support, though, this seems unlikely to happen anytime soon. So most of the burden of easing the pachyderm population's decline falls on elephant camps, which need better oversight and improvements to make sure that they operate humanely.

On my final night at Anantara camp, as we sent giant candle-powered paper lanterns known as kum loys floating upward toward a star-filled sky, I sent up with them my wishes that the once stately elephant's run of bad luck might finally come to an end.

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