Wild elephants (Elephas maximus) have found a new safe home among the young trees and are roaming around the project area. The delta is one of the last regions in Myanmar where those endangered species still roam wild. In the past, when Myanmar was still Burma, “timber elephants” were used by both colonial as well as the post- independence governments as workforces for the flourishing timber industry. They helped extract precious hardwood species from the forests and specifically remote areas. Due to this fact today, Myanmar is home to the world’s largest captive elephant population, people refer to them as “unemployed elephants”.
