Filepic of Kejora trying to wake its dead mother up.
KOTA KINABALU: Kejora or Joe the pygmy elephant which gored its caretaker to death in an unfortunate incident on Christmas Day last year, is living in solitary confinement following the incident.
However, for the wellbeing of the elephant, the Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD) is in the process of redesigning the elephant enclosure at the Lok Kawi Wildlife Park near here.
They are also in the midst of preparing towards the setting up of an area that allows protected contact for the safety of both animal and humans, said SWD director Agustine Tuuga.
“Our contractors and staff are working together to redesign the existing exhibit area so that wildlife personnel can handle elephants via protected contact in future,” he said when contacted, Saturday (Jan 21).
He said they were in the final stages of design and preparing the paperwork to ask for allocation from the state government.
“We hope to get all these done by a week or so, with the hope that the state government would channel some funds to the SWD for this purpose,” said Tuuga.
He explained that for many years, the SWD adopted the free roaming practice to handle its elephants, just like what Thailand is doing but after the accident, they decided to take on a more secure approach, which is to have a boundary between animals and handlers.
“This is more towards the practices we see in the United States,” he said.
In modifying the exhibit areas, other animals at the park such as the Ankole cattle might be moved to live with Bali cattles, so that the vacated enclosure can be used to house female elephants, said Tuuga.
“We must separate both females and males (also called cows and bulls) because they are reproducing inside the park and we need to control the population because we don’t have much space for more elephants,” he said.
He said the youngest was a few months old calf and a female elephant was now pregnant.
There are 14 elephants including nine males in the Lok Kawi park at present, Tuuga said.
He said Kejora, now in solitary confinement, must be allowed to roam with the other elephants in the park eventually, as keeping it chained up alone is not feasible in the long run.
Asked if Kejora can be released into the wild, he said ‘not possible’ as the elephant could longer survive outside captivity.
The elephant, named Baby Kejora @ Joe back in 2013, caught worldwide attention as he was the sole survivor of a poisoning that killed 14 Borneo pygmy elephants.
A heart-wrenching photograph of the calf trying to wake his dead mother up at the Gunung Rara Forest Reserve about 140km from Tawau on Jan 25, 2013, caught the attention of Malaysians and others globally.
Unfortunately, at around 8.30am on Dec 25 last year, Kejora had turned against his handler Joe Fred Lansou, 49, goring him while he was treating an injured newborn calf at the Lok Kawi Wildlife Park near here.
Lansou, who was apparently tusked on his chest and abdomen, died instantly at the exhibition area of the zoo where the captive elephants were kept.
When Kejora was first rescued, it had only allowed Lansou to feed it and become its parent, and they have been very close ever since.
Asked if Lansou’s family had asked to pursue any form of action against the elephant or the SWD for this incident, Tuuga said "no".
