Eight Asian elephants whose transfer to Australia was blocked by animal rights activists last month departed from Thailand yesterday for their long-delayed journey.
Control tower officials at Utapao airport, about 150km southeast of Bangkok, said a Russian-made transport plane carrying the animals took off at 1:30pm for the five-hour flight to Australia's Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean, where they will be kept in quarantine for several months.
Officials and protesters said the eight animals were taken from their quarantine station in the western Thai province of Kanchanaburi to the airport late on Saturday night. Protesters had physically blocked the elephants' exit from the quarantine station in June.
Protesters said the elephants should not be exported to Australia because it is possible that they were born in the wild, and would therefore be banned from trading under international agreement.
Thai and Australian authorities assert the elephants, destined for Australian zoos, were born in captivity and collected from various owners around Thailand.
Pinan Chotiseranee, an activist from Kanchanaburi who followed the convoy that carried the elephants to Utapao, said protesters and reporters had been barred from entering the little-used airport, which is controlled by the military.
"We will protest at the Australian Embassy tomorrow," she said.
The protesters want the Thai government to conduct DNA testing to determine if the elephants were born in the wild, but such testing was apparently not done.
Protests by activists in both Thailand and Australia had delayed the transfer for more than one-and-a-half years.
An Australian court cleared the way for the move last December.
RSS