With the elephant population on the decline in recent years, an environmental group focusing on Arakanese wildlife is gearing up to track wild elephants in Arakan State with video cameras, said an environmental worker from Sittwe.

The group will carry out the plan soon in Arakan Roma and the Mayu Range, where there are wild elephants. The elephants will be counted by the group with video cameras.

"The Mayu Range is located on the Bay of Bengal, so many elephants are enjoying the habitat because they get fresh air from the sea and enough food from the mountains," the worker said.

The group will record the elephants' footprints as well as their excrement in order to study their population and movement from one feeding area to another.

"I heard from local hunters in Buthidaung Township that many wild elephants have already moved to Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh from the Mayu Range in recent years because they are being trapped by some elephant poachers in the Mayu Range," he said.

According to a local source, the government has also opened a station at Atet Nanra Village in the Mayu Range in Rathidaung Township to catch the wild elephants.

Burmese authorities have reportedly captured two "white" elephants from the Mayu Range in the last five years and brought them to Rangoon in an attempt to show the Burmese people that the elephants would bring good fortune to the country.