Anyone who's been to Thailand will agree that elephants are a huge part of Thai culture. As the country's national symbol and ideal snapshots of 'exoticness', elephants are essential to Thailand's tourist trade. Visitors are absolutely bombarded by the elephant experiences on offer when browsing tourist attractions: elephant shows and elephant trekking draw in enormous numbers of travelers all searching for that 'authentic' and up close interaction with these gentle giants, unobtainable back home with only artificial looking zoos on offer.
The disturbing and brutal reality that breeds these 'must see' elephant attractions is not widely known by tourists or Thais. The fact is that mahouts and elephant trainers use what is known as the 'torture training method' to make these wild creatures obedient and tourist friendly. This method involves tying or chaining the elephant up in a confined pen that is too small for the animal to move. True to its name, the elephant is then tortured constantly with beatings, often involving sharp instruments, and left without food or water for days or even weeks. This is designed to break the animal's spirit which often takes its sanity too. Used for centuries to domesticate wild elephants, the torture training method is still accepted as the only viable training method for elephant handlers and is used in almost every elephant attraction in Thailand. Unlike the elephant populations of India and Africa, 95% of Thailand's elephants are domesticated working elephants. Furthermore, only wild elephants have any legal protection in Thailand leaving the vast majority of Thai elephants vulnerable to abuse and neglect by their owners. Deeply rooted in Thai culture, elephant training has traditionally been familial heritage passed down through the generations. Domesticated elephants were often used for logging, which became illegal as widespread destruction of Thailand's forests resulted in worsening monsoons. This left hundreds of elephants out of work and many were simply abandoned by their owners. Unable to survive in the wild, some died and many were used as tourist attractions or for street begging. Street begging elephants are dragged around cities in chains by their owners who charge tourists to feed them. Needless to say the elephants are clearly distressed by the traffic and noise and this practice became illegal due to the traffic dangers posed, however street begging elephants are still a common sight in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. Unlike the mahouts that grew up around elephants and inherited their profession, most of the elephant handlers operating today are opportunists with little or no knowledge of the nature of elephants or what they require to survive.
While some are doing good work, the vast majority of elephant camps are commercial enterprises, making money from tourists keen to have their photos taken with the young ones, bathing with the elephants, riding them, or watching their pain. Some camps even dress up their elephants and have them perform unnatural and demeaning tricks, all in the name of entertainment. But beyond the happy smiles of tourists posing with elephants, there is a hidden dark reality of murder, smuggling and torture for the calves on show. The booming Thai tourist industry is fueling a huge illegal trade in baby elephants that are taken from the wild in Burma, beaten, starved and tortured to break their spirit before being paraded in front of fee-paving holidaymakers. The reports we have recently received indicate that at least 50 to 100 elephant calves are still being taken from the forests of Burma every year to supply the tourist camps. Even worse, it is estimated that for every calf smuggle across the country's 200 mile border with Thailand, up to five adult female and adolescent elephants from the calf''s immediate family group are gunned down in cold blood. The forests of Burma are one of the last strongholds for Asian elephants and second only to India. But such is the scale of the trade, it is thought that the endangered wild elephant population there-estimated up to 5,000 individuals-could be wiped out or damaged beyond repair within ten years or so.
The Asian elephant is facing extinction and is listed as 'endangered' on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, the world's most comprehensive inventory of the conservation status of species. With an estimated 25,000 to 35,000 left in the wild, there is roughly one Asian elephant to every 20 African elephants. While ivory poaching has recently escalated to alarming levels again, threatening many African elephant populations, the crisis facing their Asian relatives is still being overlooked-something we've set out to change. The illegal and brutal cross-border trade in endangered wild Asian elephants continues to thrive. Entire families of elephants are routinely being rounded up and the adults shot dead so that babies can be dragged back to Thailand illegally. Undercover cameras filmed the elephants as they endured the dreaded phajaan, a cruel, spirit-breaking ritual where the baby calves will be tied up, with no food and water, and beaten relentlessly for days on end. It is pure torture and according to experts very often the calves will die from their injuries or from stress, starvation, or the sheer heartbreak of seeing their family killed in front of their eyes. After they have been taught to be afraid of humans, the calves that do survive are smuggled across Thailand. When they reach the tourist elephant parks, many of them will be chained to a surrogate mother in an attempt to suggest they have been bred in captivity. Telltale signs can be a complete lack of bonding between 'mother' and calf, the inability of a calf to suckle (because the 'mother' is not actually producing milk), as well as the scars from their "spirit breaking ritual".
The current market price for a healthy broken-in baby elephant is $14,000 to $20,000 and with the rapid growth of tourism and demand for elephants in entertainment-the tourism industry is calculated in Thailand to employ up to 2,000 elephants-there are strong incentives for the trade. The Thai government is eager to claim it has solved the problem, but the intelligence, testimonies and images included in the film and shot in recent months overwhelmingly suggest that the trade still continues. Earlier this year, Thai enforcement officials launched a nationwide crackdown on elephant camps in response to a series of poaching incidents. Unregistered (and therefore illegal, and potentially wild-caught) elephants were confiscated.
Elephant Nature Park, based in Chiang Mai, serving as a sanctuary for sick and injured working elephants and runs on donations. "Education is the key" explains Daeng Chaidee, the park's representative, "Much like the western world forty years ago, there is very little awareness about animal cruelty in Thailand. We host a number of Thai student groups and are starting to see more Thai support, but more is needed before a general population consensus can be established".
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