Thailand's first baby elephant produced by artificial insemination was born on Wednesday night in the northern province of Lampang.

The birth - the first of its kind in Asia - is an important step for Thailand in its attempt to save its iconic animals from an alarming decline.

Born at 9.30pm on March 7, the not-yet-named male baby elephant weighed 100 kilograms, was 90 centimetres tall, 120 centimetres long (from its forehead to the tail root), and about 128 centimetres around its chest.

It was healthy and could walk immediately, said Lampang Elephant Hospital head veterinarian Sitthidech Mahasawangkul.

"This is the first time that artificial insemination has been successfully carried out in Thailand and in Asia," Sitthidech said. "We hope that this will help increase the elephant population in Thailand, which has been declining for the past several decades."

It was the second baby for 24-year-old Phang Khod - the first female elephant in the entire region to have been successfully impregnated by the technology since early June 2005.

The semen was from a healthy 15-year-old Plai Jampati - who was born in Israel and later moved to Thailand years ago.

Sitthidech said officials separated the baby from Phang Khod - as she attacked her first baby five years ago - and gave the mother medicine to calm her.

Later on the mother and baby were put together, but the baby was not yet familiar enough with Phang Khod to breastfeed. After circling around its mother for hours, the baby finally started to suckle, bringing relief to the attending veterinarians.

The breastfeeding could last for three years. Phang Khod and the baby would continue to stay together when returned to the Elephant Conservation Centre.

The insemination was a joint effort by the National Elephant Institute (NEI), the Elephant Hospital, Kasetsart University, Chiang Mai University and related agencies. Although there were several previous successful Asian elephant inseminations in the US and Europe, this was the first in Asia, said Sitthidech.

He said the Thai elephant population decline was a result of food and water shortages. Combined with a low birth rate, this resulted in a decreasing amount of productive male elephants in captivity. Moreover, as most breeding beasts worked all year round they could not naturally reproduce in mating periods.

Sitthidech said 20 vets and researchers had introduced fresh semen into Phang Khod on June 10, 2005, using a four-foot-long rubber tube. Phang Khod was found to be pregnant three months later.

Sitthidech also spoke of another research on elephants' frozen semen by the NEI and Kasetsart University, which had been carried out since 2000.

The project is the world's first to succeed in producing frozen semen using biological technology to freeze elephant semen for up to 20-30 years for artificial inseminations, he said. Currently, it had frozen "good-breed" semen - which normally loses 20-30 per cent in strength - in the elephant sperm bank, he said, adding they would do more artificial inseminations in the near future.

There were 2,300 captive elephants and about 2,000 wild elephants in Thailand, according to an NEI report, while the Elephant Conservation Centre currently has 88 elephants.

Anan Paengnoy,

The Nation