On Thailand & the Abuse of Elephants

I recently posted a (hopefully) delightful, if not inspirational, synopsis of my recent return to the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai. I have some additional, more controversial thoughts that I thought I’d save for a separate post. So here goes.

I talked about how visiting the Elephant Nature Park is uplifting because of the contact and connection with beautiful, graceful, and gigantic creatures, yet sobering because of the stories of abuse those animals carry with them. When one has such an experience—both inspirational and heartbreaking—it’s tempting to become judgmental. During both my visits, I had heard other tourists ask, “What’s wrong with these people? How can the elephant be so sacred to Thai culture but so misused?”

I’ve contemplated this question quite a bit. And I think I have a possible explanation. It’s rather simple: poverty. It’s a matter of hierarchy of needs. It’s not as easy to take an idealistic perspective about the treatment of all living things when your own life hangs so dangerously in the balance. And desperation often leads to desperate action.

A good way to illustrate this is by examining the mahouts themselves. On the one hand, you have the logging mahouts, who resort to violence and abuse to punish the undesired behavior of elephants. On the other hand, you have the Elephant Nature Park mahouts, who reward desired behavior with food. When they want an elephant to go somewhere, they lead them with food. When they need to calm a distressed elephant, they placate them with food.

In my estimation, a stick or a hook is much cheaper than several tons a day of watermelon and bananas. There are two concepts in practice here: for-profit businesses will often seek the lowest bottom line even at the expense of living things, and people will almost always prioritize themselves over others. Moreover, it seems to me that the fight for the humane treatment of animals needs to happen alongside the fight to end human suffering.

It’s easy for Westerners to point the finger, while ignoring the fact that much of the prosperity that fosters their “enlightened” attitude towards animals stems from a history of exploitation of other people, particularly nonwhite people. This is not to excuse the actions of elephant abusers. Far from it. Many of them are probably cognizant of the degree of suffering they cause to these wonderful creatures. But perhaps they continue to do it because life must go on and quotas need to be filled. Who knows? Maybe they even regret it. Maybe it even keeps them up at night. All I’m arguing is that compassion should be universal to all species, including our own.

It’s important to fight for the lives and dignity of the innocent and defensive, no matter what species they are. So the efforts of the Elephant Nature Park are nothing but admirable and inspirational. But for me the inspiration doesn’t end with the story of the animals. I find it inspirational that a woman whose father was a healer in her humble village could have acquired the means to purchase over 60 acres of land, as well as the elephants themselves from their abusers.

Can you see the parallels here? In the same way fighting for the rights and dignity of animals involves a fight for the rights and dignity of people, the stories of rescuing those animals from abuse don’t start or end with the animals themselves. I reject the divide we place between nature and humanity. We’re linked. It’s a denial of that link that has led to such atrocities to begin with. Once we embrace that link, we can begin to solve the problems that face animals and humans alike.

Hanging Out With Elephants

The elephants eating straw and grass at feeding time. Clearly eating out is just as much a social activity for them as it is for us.

The truck sped through the field, zigzagging around clefts and dimples in the ground. Behind it, a herd of elephants stampeded gently in tow. They pressed around the truck glutinously, raising their trunks and smiling with eagerness. Some just couldn’t wait, and reached out their greedy trucks to grab a handful of grass from the bed of the truck. The mahouts gently coaxed them away with watermelon halves and bananas to give the driver enough time to rake the piles of grass out of the bed. It’s feeding time. Of course, here at the Elephant Nature Park, it’s always feeding time.

Founded in 1996, the Elephant Nature Park is an elephant rescue and rehabilitation center about two hours outside Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. The founder, Lek, has a passion for giving these animals a safe haven from the abuses they receive in the logging and tourist industries that have victimized and endangered them.

A “family” of elephants with their mahout (the good kind). At ENP, most of the elephants aren’t actually family, but they form social groups that behave exactly like families. In other words, they take care of each other.

In these industries, mahouts—the Thai term for an elephant guide—use sticks and other abusive tools to coerce elephants into performing the difficult tasks required of them in “domesticity.” Whether they’re pulling logs in the mountains, carrying tourists in parks and trails, or dazzling urbanites in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, elephants have for a long time been pulled from their natural habitats and exploited for the economic enrichment of human beings. And the ritual involved in initially breaking elephants in the logging industry is nothing short of sadistic torture.

The Elephant Nature Park is among the first of a steadily proliferating tourism attraction, where the appeal of the elephants is not riding them or seeing them perform in culture shows, but seeing them in their natural habitat and being a part of their daily peaceful lives. Instead of putting sticks and hooks in the hands of mahouts, Elephant Nature Park gives them satchels full of watermelons, bananas, and other nutritious treats. Instead of punishing animals for undesired behavior and goading them with brute force, these mahouts reward the elephants for desirable behavior and lead them with tenderness and tastiness.

Two soul sisters and their mahouts.

When I visited the park for the second time in April, I was not only pleased to see not only the progress they’ve made in only two years, but that the power of the experience does not diminish with repetition. I simply cannot adequately express how inspiring it is to be among these majestic and playful creatures. Their intelligence is uncanny; their personalities so rich. It is truly rewarding to be peacefully among these gentle giants feeding, them, petting them, and even
bathing them. Their gentleness is matched by their power, and when they charge across a field and trumpet their warnings, it’s frightfully awesome.

Three elephants at another feeding time. These three ladies stick together at all times and protect each other. The one on the far left is the one who has a broken hip. If I remember correctly, the one on the right is blind in one or both eyes.

Yet the experience isn’t wholly positive. It’s bittersweet. As I spent time around the elephants laughing at their antics, I learned their tragic stories one by one. Some elephants have been blinded, thanks to their misuse in the logging camps. One logging mahout actually stabbed out an elephant’s eyes when she “misbehaved.” Since forced breeding is a common practice in that industry, another elephant’s hips were disjointed from a male elephant that didn’t like her but was forced to mate with her. Several elephants have mangled feet from stepping on land mines while logging in formerly militarized areas.

While we were there, it was the birthday of one of the elephants. Some of the volunteers made a “cake” out of greens and fruit. As you can see, they’re all chowing down at this little trunk party.

If you ever plan to visit Thailand (nudge, nudge, wink, wink), I highly recommend making this sanctuary a part of your itinerary. It’ll be worth every penny—er, baht—to both you and these marvelous animals.

As one can imagine, the baby elephants were the most popular and most playful. The adult pictured with this one isn’t his mother. She acts as his guardian or foster parent. Because the calves don’t have the negative experiences of their guardians, they were much bolder when approaching humans. This proved dangerous for us since their guardians immediately charged in to keep them away from us.