Still a dead elephant. But this time it is not the fault of the poachers. The plastic bags ingested by the poor animal would have killed him
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himStill a dead elephant. But this time it is not the fault of the poachers. The plastic bags ingested by the poor animal killed him. It happened in Thailand, in Khao Khitchakut National Park.
That plastic waste was a major global problem and a threat to animals is certain. We have witnessed and told of suffocated turtles and many other marine creatures killed by this material. But this time it's up to another species that has nothing to do with the sea.
We are in Thailand, where in recent days a 20-year-old elephant weighing about 3,5 tons was found dead in the Khao Khitchakut National Park, in the central part of the country. The autopsy revealed that the cause of death is attributable to a series of plastic bags and other objects ingested by the pachyderm, killed by an intestinal blockage and an infection.
"How many wild animals must die?" Varawut Silpa-archa, minister of natural resources and the environment, wrote on Facebook.
that the public campaign to reduce plastic bags is “falling on deaf ears”, after the latest loss of a wild elephant…
Posted by People 4 Pachyderms on Sunday, July 12, 2020
The elephant probably unknowingly swallowed the plastic garbage left by visitors in the protected nature reserve.
"People are still deaf to our campaign," the minister said. "We have seen the loss of other animals caused by plastic bags, with the last case of the poor elephant."
The Minister urged the locals to "help us by not leaving any plastic waste inside the park".
Until recently, the nearly 70 million Thai citizens were producing 3,75 billion plastic bags per month as plastic bags were distributed freely in shops. The “Every Day Say No to Plastic Bags” campaign launched last January banned bags and led to some positive results, but the Southeast Asian nation is still one of the leading producers of plastic waste in the world.
Most of them end up in the sea. Thailand was the world's sixth largest source of ocean plastic waste last year. Over the past decade, the country has generated an average of 2 million tons of plastic waste every year.
Sources of reference: thephuketnews, Bankok Post, sustainability-times
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