{"id":1173056,"date":"2026-08-27T22:25:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T22:25:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1173056\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T22:25:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T22:25:19","slug":"in-malaysia-injured-elephant-sulongs-100km-trek-home-drives-logging-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1173056\/","title":{"rendered":"In Malaysia, injured elephant Sulong\u2019s 100km trek home drives logging debate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The lonely journey of a bull elephant trying to return to its jungle home has captured the hearts of <a target=\"_self\" class=\"e1yy41x40 ef9u0v01 css-1ankfgb ecgc78b0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/topics\/malaysia?module=inline&amp;pgtype=article\" title=\"\" data-qa=\"BaseLink-renderAnchor-StyledAnchor\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Malaysians<\/a> over the past week, putting a spotlight on the plight of wildlife struggling against deforestation and rapidly expanding human activity.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The elephant \u2013 dubbed \u201cSulong\u201d by Malaysians keenly following social media updates on his weeks-long journey \u2013 was first spotted by motorists on August 17, walking slowly along the busy East-West Highway in an apparent attempt to reach the northeastern state of Kelantan.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Wildlife authorities had previously relocated Sulong to a forest reserve in Gerik, Perak, more than 230km (140 miles) southwest from the forest surrounding Chalil, a remote village in Kelantan\u2019s Gua Musang district, where locals had raised concerns of repeated incursions on farms and village land.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Videos of Sulong\u2019s trek soon went viral. Images of the gentle giant limping slowly with an injury to its front right leg proved too much to bear for some.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cImagine an injured elephant walking hundreds of kilometres on unknown terrain, purely following its instinct to return home,\u201d read one emotional social media post. \u201cHe is not a problem. He is not a disturbance. He is just a wild animal, a living creature in search of its home.\u201d<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">After weeks of trudging along asphalt roads, Sulong finally made his way back into the forested area of Jeli in Kelantan on Wednesday, according to wildlife authorities \u2013 roughly halfway home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The lonely journey of a bull elephant trying to return to its jungle home has captured the hearts&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1173057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3847],"tags":[318136,318140,318143,318138,318142,318137,24908,318141,62342,185314,74500,268574,70,318139,16,15,1717,47474,186189],"class_list":["post-1173056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-abdul-kadir-abu-hashim","tag-chalil","tag-department-of-wildlife-and-national-parks","tag-east-west-highway","tag-gerik","tag-gua-musang","tag-habitat-destruction","tag-jeli","tag-kelantan","tag-logging","tag-malaysians","tag-perak","tag-science","tag-sulong","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wildlife","tag-wildlife-corridors","tag-wwf"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117169823788121563","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1173056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1173057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1173056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1173056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1173056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}