Save the Thai Elephants

Elephant Camp Pictures

One of my big tourist goals for the trip was to take an elephant ride. And I took a short one early in the trip, but it made me crave some more substantial interaction with the cuddly-looking beasts.

Elephants have been used for work and ceremonial purposes in Thailand for centuries. One of Chiang Mai's most sacred temples, Wat Doi Suthep, was built because one of the king's revered white elephants selected it as the site for the house of an important Buddha. They are very powerful animals, and can haul heavy loads with relative ease. Today, they're a huge tourist draw, and help contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to the Thai economy.

I started looking for elephant camps as early as March, and found a few outside Chiang Mai that advertised elephant circuses, orchestras and even paintings produced by elephants. All over Thailand, you can take an elephant ride through a forest or jungle with less than a day's notice. They even roam the streets in Bangkok, and for a few baht you can pet them and feed them. Rationally, I knew these were not things that elephants do naturally, but I was too preoccupied with thoughts like "Elephants are cool! I want to play with the elephants!" to allow any concerns over animal cruelty to influence my elephant-related decisions.

I eventually chose to visit the Elephant Nature Park because I'd heard it offered bareback elephant riding and the chance to play with the elephants in water. When I arrived, I learned that it was a refuge for elephants who've been abused by their owners. The elephants are purchased by the camp, nursed back to health, and allowed to live out their days enjoying "just being elephants." The tourists get to interact with them in a way that is healthy for everyone, and learn about the abuse that many Thai elephants suffer.

There are no laws to protect elephants from cruel treatment in Thailand, and they are very expensive to purchase and maintain, so there is a great incentive for owners to treat them in a way that they think will maximize productivity and profit. They are "trained" for such work as babies, when they are "broken" during a process called the Phaajaan. The babies are separated from their mothers (often for the first time), locked in a cage with no freedom of movement, then hit and beaten and abused until they learn not to resist their owners. And that's just the start of the cruelty. They're often underfed and overworked ... and that's only in the "average" case.

I heard dozens of stories about how the elephants at the Nature Park were mistreated. One was bought jointly by two owners, each of which wanted a full day of work out of the elephant. So they pumped her full of drugs to force her to perform, and increased the dose as her tolerance grew, until she became cataonic. Another was blinded, one stepped on a landmine. Three elephants had stab wounds in their trunks that were still healing. They had scars from beatings, malformed hips and knees.


This guy at the left is Max, the largest elephant at the camp. He has an abcess under his eye, still healing from the abuse he suffered from his owner. He's been at the camp for 3 years. He was also hit by a car, and is still limping.

At the elephant camps that were literally down the road, elephants are trained and disciplined using hooks. I don't want to imagine how much and in what ways a hook needs to be used in order to train an elephant to perform a circus trick, play an instrument or create a work of "art." It takes a lot of hook usage to get an elephant to hike the same stretch of jungle day after day with a tourist sitting on their backs. Most of the elephants at the Nature Park who did this sort of work were severely underweight and used to being underfed when they arrived.

Almost all the elephants that tourists see have suffered this sort of abuse, and the tourism revenue encourages these practices to continue. If you ask if the elephants are well-treated, or mind giving rides, you'll be assured that they don't mind, that it's work they were meant to do. But that's simply not true.

Please, before you go to Thailand, do some research about how the elephants are treated. Don't give your money to a camp or handler who treats them badly. Go to the Elephant Nature Park or the ONE other similar camp in Thailand that treats elephants with genuine respect and affection. If every tourist does this, those camps will shut down and the practices will change.