Fight For Food

Thet Htoo is a fine art photographer and photojournalist based in Yangon.He is deeply concerned about industrial deforestation and lack of care for the environment, a worry that is entirley appropriate as according to the UN, Myanmar has the third-highest rate of deforestation in the world today.

His story is about how deforestation disrupts the relation between human beings and animals. In the Pegu mountain range, villages are now threatened by wild elephants, who need to forage closer to human inhabitation as logging destroys their natural habitat. The villagers put their hopes in superstition and elephant hunters who try to lure the animals away from their homes, and if that fails, to protect them with nets and handmade spears.

Many inhabitants have fled, and more than fifty people have died from the attacks in the last few years. Those remaining built tree houses to protect themselves from the elephants.

The Htoo says, “I hope my story makes us think long and hard about our attitudes towards nature. We have to change, for sooner or later, our survival will depend on it.”