Elephants evacuated, animals stranded in floods in Thailand

More than 100 elephants in northern Thailand have been moved to higher ground to escape rapidly rising flood waters, local media reported, but many other animals were still stuck as their sanctuary struggled to evacuate them on Friday.

Saengduean Chailert, director of the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai province, had posted a video of the panic-stricken elephants splashing through muddy waters and asked the government to send "urgent help".

"The water is flooding worse than before. The entire area is flooded. The whole village is flooded... Right now, we have nowhere to go," she wrote on social media.

Photos and videos showed brown water rushing through the Elephant Nature Park as staff and volunteers carried dogs in blankets and placed cages on rubber tyres to transport animals to safety.

The park falls under the remit of the Save the Elephant Foundation, one of Thailand's biggest elephant conservation NGOs.

One of the foundation's officers told AFP that aside from 126 elephants, there were around 5,000 animals –- including dogs, cats, cows, pigs and rabbits -- stuck in the floods.

Local media reported that more than 100 staff and volunteers were able to safely transport 117 of the elephants to higher ground.

Major inundations have struck parts of northern Thailand as recent heavy downpours caused the Ping River to reach "critical" levels on Thursday, according to the district office.

Thailand's northern provinces have been hit by large floods since Typhoon Yagi struck the region in early September, with one district reporting its worst inundations in 80 years.

Thai Elephant Alliance says there are around 3,800 captive elephants in the country, and there are more than 4,000 individuals living in the wild, according to the Thailand Environment Institute.

The Asian elephant is classified as endangered by the IUCN, and contact and conflict between humans and the species is common in Thailand.

© Agence France-Presse