Traffic and other campaigners want to see a toughening of the laws in Thailand. If an animal is captured at the border it can be seized.

However, if the animal gets into the country there are significant loopholes. Elephants don't have to be registered until they are eight years old, creating an opportunity for these smuggled calves to be "laundered" into the domestic population.

"Elephant populations are being depleted all over South East Asia," said Dr Shepherd.

"By logging, being poached for their ivory and captured for trade - if you add up all these pressures, any off-take at all has a conservation impact."

Political turmoil in Thailand over the past two years hasn't helped the drive to strengthen the laws in the country.

Thailand made significant efforts to ban a legal trade in ivory ahead of a meeting of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) last year.

There are worries that while laws exist on the statute books, they are not always enforced.
elephants Elephants being held at a camp near the border between Myanmar and Thailand

"They clamped down and seized elephants but no-one was prosecuted," said Joanna Cary-Elwes from the charity Elephant Family.

"Their heart is in the right place but there's absolutely no deterrent to criminals - it is low risk and very high profit."

She believes that tourists need greater awareness of the smuggling situation, especially at trekking facilities.

"This is a UK-relevant issue - we have a million people flocking to Thailand every year. Most don't realise when they are posing next to a cute baby elephant what that animal has had to endure to be in a camp."

The campaigners are hoping that a meeting of Cites in Switzerland next week will increase pressure on both Thailand and Myanmar to act.
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