Decades of war, poaching, and habitat destruction have decimated Vietnam’s Asian elephant population, a trend the Vietnamese government is belatedly trying to reverse. Following a September agreement between Vietnam and Cambodia to cooperate on elephant conservation, a herd of elephants in Vietnam will be moved by truck from the southern coastal province of Binh Thuan to Dak Lak on the Cambodian border. There are only about 80 surviving Asian elephants in Vietnam, and conservationists predict that without major intervention the species could become locally extinct within 20 years.
