Activists said the celebrity endorsement would raise awareness of the plight of pachyderms that got drunk on farmers' homemade rice beer and went on the rampage.

Last month, six wild elephants that broke into a farm in the state of Meghalaya were electrocuted after discovering and drinking the potent brew before uprooting an electricity pylon.

"There would have been more casualties if the villagers hadn't chased them away," Hilton was quoted as saying in Tokyo last week according to a report posted on the World Entertainment News Network website. "And four elephants died in a similar way three years ago. It is just so sad.

"The elephants get drunk all the time. It is becoming really dangerous. We need to stop making alcohol available to them."

Sangeeta Goswami, who heads the animal rights group People for Animals, said:"I am indeed happy Hilton has taken note of recent incidents of wild elephants in north-east India going berserk after drinking homemade rice beer and getting killed.

"As part of her global elephant campaign, Hilton should, in fact, think of visiting this region [which is] literally infested with elephants."

While welcoming Hilton's interest, another conservationist said elephant alcohol abuse was just a symptom of a larger problem.

"Elephants appear on human settlements ... because they have no habitat left due to wanton destruction of forests," Soumyadeep Dutta, who heads Nature's Beckon, a regional conservation group, said. "A celebrity like Hilton must focus her attention on this fact."

Hilton's publicist could not be reached for comment. The heiress promised to improve her bad girl image when she completed a three-week jail sentence in June for violating probation in an alcohol-related reckless driving case.

She announced plans to do charity work in Rwanda for the Playing for Good Foundation, but the trip was postponed until next year.