Sydney Morning Herald
June 25, 2008
Sakura was in big trouble. The three-year-old elephant had fallen backwards into a well three metres deep, and was trapped. She had been there for nearly two weeks without food or water. Her mother and the herd had finally given up and moved on.
Sakura's desperate calls were weakening and she was facing a lonely, lingering death.
Sakura is not the first baby elephant to be trapped in one of the thousands of abandoned wells in the forests of Sumatra, nor will she be the last.
Her story really starts 24 years ago, when the Indonesian Government gazetted the 130,000-hectare Way Kambas National Park in south-eastern Sumatra. Eight villages and about 4500 households were relocated. Each family left behind a well and a cesspit, which forest regrowth quickly covered.
Those hidden wells are a deadly legacy threatening the very animals the park is designed to protect. The lowland and swamp forest park is home to the rare Sumatran tiger (400 remain in the wild) and the equally threatened Sumatran rhinoceros (275 remaining). It also shelters the smallest sub-species of Asian elephant.
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