South Asian experts meet to protect endangered Elephants

75 elephant experts from five South Asian countries have met in a two-day meeting in southern Bangladesh in an effort to Protect Endangered Elephants. The conference was jointly sponsored by the Washington-based Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and Nairobi-based organisation for Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants. The meeting adopted policies and programmes for the conservation of endangered elephants. Asian elephant numbers across Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Combodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam, are now 60,000, down from 150,000 two decades ago.