Hungry Elephants Trample Plantations

Fifty hungry elephants looking for food trampled pineapple and banana plantations, causing $48,000 in damage, a local official said Monday.

Irate villagers have so far heeded a request by Thailand’s Queen Sirikit and Princess Sirindhorn not to harm the elephants.

Instead, they are burning tires and firing gunshots into the air to try to drive the animals away from the plantations in Prachuab Khiri Khan province, 90 miles south of Bangkok, said local official Chuchart Chucherd.

The animals normally live in nearby Kaeng Krachan National Park. The plantations were their traditional foraging grounds before being developed in recent years.

The herd so far has devastated 69 acres of pineapples and 2 acres of bananas, along with some other land planted with sugar cane.