Historical Account of Managing Overabundant Wild Asian Elephants in Myanmar by the Kheddah System of Capture: Philosophy, Principles and Practices
Khyne U. Mar

TL;DR
This paper documents the historical use of the Kheddah system in Myanmar to capture wild elephants for managing human-elephant conflict.
Contribution
The paper provides a detailed historical account and assessment of the Kheddah system as a now-obsolete elephant capture method.
Findings
The Kheddah system was used to capture and tame wild elephant herds for logging work in Myanmar.
The method was employed as an emergency solution when standard capture techniques were impractical.
The system was banned in 1985 due to ethical and welfare concerns.
Abstract
Historically, one of the strategies the Myanmar Government employed to resolve human–elephant conflict was the capture of whole herds of elephants using the Kheddah system. This involved trapping the herd in a stockade, immediately followed by on-site post-capture taming. After taming, the captured elephants were trained to be utilized as logging elephants. The capture of wild elephants was formally banned in Myanmar in 1985, but occasional, small-scale, captures by the Kheddah system were allowed until 2013. These captures were under the strict control of the Myanmar Government and focused primarily on elephants involved in human–elephant conflict, rather than capturing to supplement the working elephant population. The method itself has largely fallen out of use because capturing an ecologically important, iconic animal is unacceptable and against current welfare requirements. This…
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Taxonomy
TopicsWildlife Ecology and Conservation · Animal Disease Management and Epidemiology · Primate Behavior and Ecology
