Elephants in the News
Dear All
Greetings from a beautifully misty sunrise here in the Golden Triangle, a tropical storm up in China has filled the Mekong which has now backed up and all our grassland has gone under for the first flood of the year. The ducks are happy and all the elephants are spending their nights on the hill, the eles are turning orange all our mahout students are engrained with red dirt.
The tropical storm has moved on and the sunshine on the flood is giving us the best morning mist shows and perfect sky sunsets.
The reason I am writing is to share with you a few links from the Thai media relating to elephants and conservation, the links are getting quite old now and I have to admit that they have been eating a hole in my 'share-with-the-blog' file. I have resisted the temptation to draw conclusions from these unrelated media stories as the main aim of the blog is to share the public impression of elephants with you - that and conclusions I draw usually prove far from conclusive!
Firstly a story from Chiang Rai that made the front page of the Bangkok Post, it was a plea for help from the Police Colonel of the city; currently there are about five elephants of all ages roaming the streets in town begging - the Police blame this on Khan Gluay and animated Thai film about an elephant but I'm not so sure, the film may be responsible for increased price put on the head of tragically young elephants but most of the mahouts in Chiang Rai have been seen here before.
Needless to say we offered to help the police but I also visited the elephants and made sure they got some antiseptic and knew that, if they wanted, there is a home here - unfortunately I don't have the money to rescue five and stongly suspect that were I to rescue these street eles five more would come in their place.
Apart from Chiang Mai, where I have never seen one, it seems that every city and small town in Thailand is on the circuit for these eles. Katherine Conner is desparately trying to rescue two that she has found in the relative tourist backwater of Sisatchanalai and Uttaradit - their presence there as well as in other non-tourist towns leads me to believe that locals are just as prone to give money to have their photo's taken with these eles as the tourists who are often blamed. We know that the Bangkok authorities have recently stepped up their efforts to expel the eles from the capital, I am wondering whether this might be the reason we are seeing increased activity in the provinces?
Most heartbreaking, Katherine's latest campaign was galvanised by the fact that she discovered an extremely young elephant, being handled it seems by non-experienced mahouts (they hadn't named it) too late to save it.
Callous as they may be, an experienced mahout will always know enough to give their elephant enough care to ensure it survives - to let it die is to lose what now seems to be a 550,000 baht investment and a livelihood.
Don't worry, I don't have as many thoughts-to-share about the other two links, the first underlines the Thai people's deep love of elephants (ironically it may be their deep love that encourages them to give money to street mahouts) surrounding an old wild elephant that got caught in a bog, probably close to its time anyway, and the efforts made by the public to save him - not particularly good conservation practise but evidence nonetheless of a great affection.
The second may be part of another blog someday as it is related to the endangered Giant Mekong Catfish and international efforts to save this remarkable fish, the battle to save it (as well as the villages from which it has traditionally been hunted and for whom it makes up not only a large part of their yearly income but a huge part of their culture) centres on our area of the Mekong - since reading the article I have been in touch with the main researcher and hopefully I will know more as time passes!
Apologies for the long and rambling missive, most unlike me!
Many thanks
John
Greetings from a beautifully misty sunrise here in the Golden Triangle, a tropical storm up in China has filled the Mekong which has now backed up and all our grassland has gone under for the first flood of the year. The ducks are happy and all the elephants are spending their nights on the hill, the eles are turning orange all our mahout students are engrained with red dirt.
The tropical storm has moved on and the sunshine on the flood is giving us the best morning mist shows and perfect sky sunsets.
The reason I am writing is to share with you a few links from the Thai media relating to elephants and conservation, the links are getting quite old now and I have to admit that they have been eating a hole in my 'share-with-the-blog' file. I have resisted the temptation to draw conclusions from these unrelated media stories as the main aim of the blog is to share the public impression of elephants with you - that and conclusions I draw usually prove far from conclusive!
Firstly a story from Chiang Rai that made the front page of the Bangkok Post, it was a plea for help from the Police Colonel of the city; currently there are about five elephants of all ages roaming the streets in town begging - the Police blame this on Khan Gluay and animated Thai film about an elephant but I'm not so sure, the film may be responsible for increased price put on the head of tragically young elephants but most of the mahouts in Chiang Rai have been seen here before.
Needless to say we offered to help the police but I also visited the elephants and made sure they got some antiseptic and knew that, if they wanted, there is a home here - unfortunately I don't have the money to rescue five and stongly suspect that were I to rescue these street eles five more would come in their place.
Apart from Chiang Mai, where I have never seen one, it seems that every city and small town in Thailand is on the circuit for these eles. Katherine Conner is desparately trying to rescue two that she has found in the relative tourist backwater of Sisatchanalai and Uttaradit - their presence there as well as in other non-tourist towns leads me to believe that locals are just as prone to give money to have their photo's taken with these eles as the tourists who are often blamed. We know that the Bangkok authorities have recently stepped up their efforts to expel the eles from the capital, I am wondering whether this might be the reason we are seeing increased activity in the provinces?
Most heartbreaking, Katherine's latest campaign was galvanised by the fact that she discovered an extremely young elephant, being handled it seems by non-experienced mahouts (they hadn't named it) too late to save it.
Callous as they may be, an experienced mahout will always know enough to give their elephant enough care to ensure it survives - to let it die is to lose what now seems to be a 550,000 baht investment and a livelihood.
Don't worry, I don't have as many thoughts-to-share about the other two links, the first underlines the Thai people's deep love of elephants (ironically it may be their deep love that encourages them to give money to street mahouts) surrounding an old wild elephant that got caught in a bog, probably close to its time anyway, and the efforts made by the public to save him - not particularly good conservation practise but evidence nonetheless of a great affection.
The second may be part of another blog someday as it is related to the endangered Giant Mekong Catfish and international efforts to save this remarkable fish, the battle to save it (as well as the villages from which it has traditionally been hunted and for whom it makes up not only a large part of their yearly income but a huge part of their culture) centres on our area of the Mekong - since reading the article I have been in touch with the main researcher and hopefully I will know more as time passes!
Apologies for the long and rambling missive, most unlike me!
Many thanks
John
A link on a lighter note......or it would be if the Sunday Telegraph in London would update its own website. Have you seen their big report yesterday (23 July) on the "Four Seasons Golden Triangle"......I quote...."Beyond the Burma Bar live six of the most pampered elephants on Earth"
"Pampered. What moi??? compared to a journo on a familiarisation freebie?????"
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....Oh, we make 'em work hard for those good reviews (honest!).
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....the Telegraph have updated their website - click here for Teresa's version of the Tented Camp, the eles over there are detailed on the our main site and the babies visit most days on their exercise.
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Why on earth do these people wish to parade eles round crowded streets in Bangkok or elsewhere? The answer is, of course, money but surely there are enough jobs available forthe mahouts not to continue this practice. The police should fine them heavily and there should be more resources for the rescue of these poor eles. We are, of course, rambling on about an ideal world but we hate to think of these poor animals being paraded about simply to have photos taken with people. Keep up the good work and look forward to seeing you when we return to Thailand next February.
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Dear Ann and Alan
Unfortunately, there aren't enough jobs for mahouts and elephants and, for the most part, those that do exist cannot afford to pay realistically.
Most of the street mahouts I have met fall into the category of coming from traditional elephant owning families - mostly from Surin and Buriram - who have always taken their elephants away from home in the dry season when there's no fodder at home.
In those days it was the babies and juveniles that stayed at home and the adults came out, some for logging, some even into a Bangkok with no traffic, little tarmac and work for elephants (lifting, hauling at the docks, sorting logs etc.)
Now, tragically, it is the young elephants that can earn the revenue and the older ones that stay behind (or in tourist camps in Pattaya or Phuket) - but the mahouts from the old families just see a continuation of a way of life in a changing world.
What is needed is the provision of somewhere for them to go back to and something for them to do there - the Government is working on it with the 'Elephant's Come Home' project in Surin - unfortunately this year it didn't provide for the fact that fodder is scarce and expensive in Surin nowadays, but it is a laudable work-in-progress.
The project at Anantara is just one of several forested homes now springing up (some of the Thai run sanctuaries have been doing their work for years) to provide an alternative.
NOW, BEFORE I GET INTO MY "STREET MAHOUTS ARE ALL MIS-UNDERSTOOD SAINTS" BIT...
...I also have met straight out businessmen (still from the old mahouting families) who are there purely for the money - they have trucks for transportation, 'employ' troupes of young boys to be mahouts, split mothers and babies too early to keep the cuteness factor and don't worry about the damage done later in life. As I said in the main piece a true mahout will see his elephant as an investment and may not give them the best treatment but will not fully endanger them. Puang Phet came from such a businessman, Plai Tawan did too, and the worry with these guys is if we give them money they just go and get another elephant without caring - there is no attachment to their elephants, just a commodity.
I believe the mahouts Katherine is chasing in Uttaradit fall into this category.
Another, even more worrying, category that has been documented by K. Lek of the Elephant Nature Park - one of the oldest and best rescue projects - and others is ordinary people with no elephant experience buying baby elephants in Burma for very little or even poaching them from the wild - killing the mother in the process (or, to my mind, probably mother being killed by villagers for the small tushes and meat and the baby being sold in a market) and taking them on the streets - looking after an elephant is easy right? We see these kids from Surin doing it all the time.
Wrong...
...and though I cannot prove it, I suspect the baby that died before Katherine could save it may well have come from this area.
Ooops, the reply was longer than the original blog which was already too long for a blog they tell me. But as I continuously say, it is a subject I spend a good deal of my time thinking about and have yet to come up with an answer!
Thanks
John
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