One Year Away

Joseph

We have posted a new photo album called Northern Thailand.  Enjoy!

In a Toronto magazine we had read about an elephant sanctuary in Thailand that takes in orphaned or abused elephants.   The Elephant Nature Camp is run by a woman called Lek, which means small in Thai.  It is  home to 28  elephants, many of which have horrible stories of abuse before they were rescued.

When the Thai government banned all logging 1989 a huge number of working elephants became “unemployed”.  As they could no longer generate any income for their owners many elephants were neglected or abandoned.  The camp gave some of those elephants a place to live in peace with ample food and no work.

Volunteers at the camp put up fences, plant elephant grass, repair huts, and do a variety of other unglamorous but essential jobs.  They also get to be closer to elephants than just about anywhere else in the world.  We wanted to sign up to volunteer at the camp for a week but since it is holiday season they had a full house and they could not take us.  So instead we went for a day trip out to the camp that turned out to be a really incredible experience.

In the morning we were picked up by a van that took our small group to a local market were we bought large amounts of bananas and pineapples that would be fed to the elephants.  We traveled about an hour and a half outside of Chiang Mai before we reached the camp. 

At feeding time we gathered on an elevated deck that wraps around the main building.  There each elephant had its own basket of pineapples and bananas that must have been about two feet high and the same in diameter.  There was a serious amount of fruit for each elephant and this was only a supplement to their main diet of grasses and corn stalks.    Apparently large working elephants can eat about 10% of their weight per day, so for a 10,000 pound adult this is 1,000 pounds per day!

We held bunches of bananas or whole pineapples out for the elephants and they grabbed them with their trunks before devouring them with only a couple of chews.  Surprisingly to me, most of the elephants preferred the bananas and would sometimes toss a ripe and delicious smelling pineapple to the ground before extending their trunk again and reaching for the bananas.

Our guide for the day was a  tattoo parlor owner from Michigan who had fallen in love with the elephants so much that she moved to the camp and now returns home only for a couple of months per year.  She knew the detailed history of each elephant and how they fit in with the different “family groups” that had formed at the park.  Her stories about the elephants kept us paying attention all day.

One of the early elephants to be rescued had been forced to work twice as long as normal by its owner.  To keep it going, the elephant was given amphetamines and arrived at the camp addicted to the drug.   Another was a landmine victim and had part of its foot destroyed so that now it cannot walk properly.  Both elephants are now as recovered as they can be and seemed happy. 

Not only are many of the elephants physically abused but many also arrive suffering mentally from the tortuous traditional training techniques that villagers use.  The pajan ceremony involves putting a 2 to 4 year old elephant into a tiny cage then beating it repeatedly with a pole that has a nail through the end.  The elephants are left in the cage and deprived of food, water and sleep for up to two weeks until their will is broken and they learn to fear and obey their masters.  Up to 40% of the elephants put through the training are said to die from it. 

Lek is raising her three baby elephants using only positive reinforcement to prove that the barbarous pajan is not needed in order to make elephants docile and obedient enough to work with.  I think it’s too early to tell if she will be successful but if she is that would be a major triumph for her and future Asian elephants. 

The highlight of the day for me was bathing the elephants.  Once after lunch and once at the end of the day the elephants are taken to the river where they are bathed and brushed.  We jumped right in and splashed or scrubbed the elephants to cool them off and clean them.  Getting to be up close and personal with the happy elephants was something I won’t soon forget. 

Elephant Nature Foundation runs the park.
If you want more information check out their website –  http://www.elephantnaturefoundation.org/