The bones of five elephants suspected to have been trafficked were dug up in Hua Hin yesterday.
An animal trafficking task force on the case believes that the animals were likely to be used in an attempt to mate wild elephants with the captive elephant population.
In Moo Baan Chang (Elephant Village), the group excavated a site believed to have been used as an illegal elephant burial ground, reported Bangkok Post.
The trafficking experts of the Paya Sua Task Force were told that elephant poachers had drugged several wild elephants in Phetchaburi’s Kaeng Krachan National Park and transported them via truck to the Elephant Village to mate them with captive pachyderms. Unfortunately, the poachers accidentally overdosed some of the elephants with tranquilizers and killed them.
The head of the task force, Chaiwat Limlikit-aksorn, said that the owner of the Elephant Village reported zero elephant deaths to officials. The team used backhoes to dig up five sites in the village where they suspected that elephants had been buried.
Yesterday afternoon, the skeletal remains of the elephants began to be unearthed. Some were hidden beneath three meters of earth to the side of the village’s reception center. More bones were found 200 meters away from the first site. Officials are not yet sure of the ages of the elephants but guessed that they had been underground for at least two years.
Excavation will continue at the Elephant Village. The staff have been detained pending questioning and the investigation is ongoing.
