From the archives: 2011
Elephants have been in trouble in northern Thailand for decades, but now efforts to conserve and revive their population are showing promise
By David Winch
Photos, Pierre-Michel Virot and Thai Elephant Centre
UN Special magazine, May 2011
First things first: elephants are fun to watch. A lot of fun. But just what is it about them that captures everyone’s attention? Watching close-up, Khalang, a baby of one and a half years, runs around madly in his open-air pen, playing soccer with three balls at once. He eats mini-bananas by the dozen, begging visitors for more with his trunk dangling over the fence, as Mother watches nearby.
That is how close you get at the Lampang elephant conservation centre in northern Thailand, a full-service pachyderm park, clinic, veterinary centre, tourist attraction and walk-in Elephant Central.
The UN Special reporting team went behind the scenes there, to witness an idyllic, Jungle Book scene. (Or perhaps a neo-Jurassic Park, a high-treed bestiary in the tropics.) New elephant arrivals are taken to an outdoor “classroom” deep in the forest. As we were arriving, a blue-uniformed trainer rode a wobbly male elephant through a verdant gulley, instructing it to walk properly. In a thatch-roofed wooden shelter, a baby is prompted to walk correctly after being “penned”. He is trained with banana rewards to step up and down, or to pick up a stick. If he puts the hat on his trainer’s head, again he got another banana.
The mahout, or trainer, rides the beast with his foot pressing on its ear, or tugs on its ear to make the animal raise a foot. Like using the gearshift and brakes all at once.
Love elephants
Somchat Changkarn, a personable young mahout, “grew to love elephants” and so 10 years ago joined the team at Lampang. It then had 100 trainers.
The first such elephant training centre was set up at Bangla in 1969; Lampang has existed since 1991. It now employs 200 staff, including trainers. While young people are interested in elephants, they are not rushing to become mahouts, says Changkarn: the work “is hard, dirty and dangerous”.
The first thing, he says, is that you have to love elephants: “If the trainer is good, the elephants are good”. They like some trainers, but spit on those they don’t like. They can be jealous, possessive, territorial. Their behaviours are clear, he insists: elephants learn and are very intelligent.
The key moment in the recent history of elephants in Thailand was the 1989 decision of the Government to ban logging, following the calamitous decline of the country’s teak forests. This left many working elephants un- or under-employed. Without any monetary benefit for their owners, the latter often just abandoned them, leaving elephants at the mercy of car accidents, too little appropriate food, tusk infections, random exploitation, work hazards, landmines and other dangers.
Dr. Sittidet Mahasawangkul, the chief hospital veterinarian, is a soft-spoken young professional. He smiles effortlessly and speaks with assurance. “There are a total of maybe 20 elephant specialists in the Government, people who have done a veterinary specialty, postgraduate work on elephants”, he notes. At Lampang, the elephants were in some cases brought by their owners. This “moved elephants to the tourism business”, he said. Training added to hospital care and food costs (300,000 baht, or $10,000, for food per month) led Lampang to fund the centre’s efforts with tourism.
A boost is surely needed; this major species has been decimated. The decline was drastic, from 100,000 a century ago, a maximum of 5,000 elephants survive today in Thailand – proportions similar to those for, among other threatened species, tigers in Asia or sea turtles in Gulf of Mexico.
Elephants are native to the northeast (100 are in a national park there and about 100 in the Northwest (Chiangmai) and south of Thailand, near the Myanmar border. In the northeast of Thailand, they may live in close proximity to humans. “There is no hunting – that is now illegal,” says Dr. Mahasawangkul.
When elephants have medical problems, accidents and humans are the cause of 95 per cent of them. Often only a small intervention is needed, cleaning a wound or binding an injury. It is rare for them to have surgery. Lampang hospital had 10 elephants when we visited, with 27 in the rehab centre. Our guide Tu noted that baby rehab comes first.
Poignant cases highlighted
The Thai elephant supporters’ newsletter highlights poignant cases of animals getting lost, being injured, mistreated or, worse sometimes, ending up stuck in a polluted urban setting. Post-logging, tourism upholds the demand side for elephants. But no one should imagine that life in the wild was idyllic or full of Disney-ish pathos: elephants can be very cruel. One account told of a mother repeatedly attempting to kill her baby, despite sustained efforts to calm her anger.Yet wondrous tales also circulate of them rising above their station and befriending humans. Elephants are now used, for example, in the treatment of autism. Mahouts tell of an autistic boy who, after overcoming his initial fears, rode elephants and showed a whole new command of his emotions.
Baby elephants take three years to wean, a process which is often cut short by distress. They often must be trained to walk properly and to follow commands. If their life span is healthy, they can live 70 years in captivity; in the wild, their lifespan has reached 100 years.
Government support in Thailand is given for conservation, and tourism projects. Also, as Dr. Mahasawangkul explains, funding is a broadly popular move since elephants are “like a sacred animal in Buddhism”. Some project support comes from the private sphere (ASPCA, Danish groups), along with a “little bit” of cooperation from India and other Asian countries. In an odd sideline, money is also raised at Lampang by selling paper-like products made from elephant dung. A Thai businessman reasoned that this waste would be full of pulp fibre from elephants’ bamboo diet. Once bleached and pressed, it might be printable. It worked. (Dung-made cards and gifts are available at the visitor centre).
Whatever the source of financial help, the staff at Lampang stress they need it to work effectively. And the elephants trumpet their support, surely hoping that the twenty-first century will be one of health and revival for them.
See also: www.thailandelephant.org
And in other elephant news:
French summary:
Au secours des éléphants
L’équipe d’UN Special a visité les coulisses du Sanctuaire des éléphants de Lampang et assisté à une scène idyllique, digne du Livre de la jungle (ou d’un parc néo-jurassique ou d’un bestiaire de haute futaie sous les tropiques). Les nouveaux venus sont conduits en « classe » de plein air au fond de la forêt. A notre arrivée, un cornac en uniforme bleu montait un éléphant mâle bancal à travers un ravin verdoyant et lui apprenait à marcher correctement. Sous un abri en bois au toit de chaume, un éléphanteau est incité à marcher comme il faut après avoir été gardé dans un enclos. Avec comme récompense une banane, il apprend à monter et descendre ou à prendre un bâton. S’il réussit à mettre un chapeau sur la tête de son cornac, il obtient une banane supplémentaire. C’est une étape clef dans la rééducation des éléphants maltraités ou abandonnés en Thaïlande.
