talk till morning
For the Love of Ideas
light at the end: hope for elephants in tourism
people across the globe have stood aghast as the darkest secrets of the elephant tourist industry are revealed for all to see
Camps in Thailand have made a fortune by keeping elephants and offering them up for the amusement of tourists. On many a person's bucket list is the point of riding an elephant.
An adult Asian elephant can weigh anything between two and a half to five and a half tonnes depending on its sex. 70 kilos of human is unlikely to break its back. However, when you add 40°C, 100% humidity, hundreds of kilos of howdah and an entire family, suddenly the toil is palpable. Morality aside, few things are more dangerous than a five tonne animal in distress.
An elephant looks out over her sanctuary after a mud bath
You have to break an elephant before you can ride it. Phajaan. also reffered to as elephant crushing, subjects elephants to starvation, heat exhaustion, incarceration, torture, and removes young calves from their mothers to do so. Some are bred in captivity but many are taken from the wild in countries like Myanmar and smuggled across its Thai border.
But grim as it is now, we may be turning a page.
Not all camps that keep elephants are abusive. In fact, a movement has begun sweeping across the country calling for the removal of elephants from abusive owners, who force them to be ridden, perform tricks, and work too much, to be relocated in sanctuaries. Thailand has recently tightened its border with Myanmar and established a national elephant database to provide better records and higher accountability of keepers.
Elephants kept at a roadside stop trained to do tricks
Yet we are still a long way off. World Animal Protection inspected captive living conditions across South East Asia, from 2014-2016, and found only 200 of 3000 elephants, across 220 venues, lived in acceptable conditions. Moreover, scam sanctuaries continue to dupe tourists into thinking their elephants are well treated.
One of the camps I visited was a genuine sanctuary. It is leading the way in ethical elephant tourism, and with continued international pressure, others are likely to have to follow suit.
Everyone likes a good scratch
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To find out what you can do to end elephant abuse, PETA details it here.