The pressure mounts on our City Cousins (even CNN are getting in on the act)
I have to admit that, in my old age, it is gratifying to see something that you seem to have been banging on about ad infinitum, ad nauseum (and yes, I get it, ad tedium) for years finally hit the big time in people's consciousness - albeit not as a result of any of my efforts.
As the rumours started circulating back in January or February that someone in the stratosphere of Thai culture had become concerned with the plight of Thailand's street elephants, various different Government Departments queued up to offer their solutions, often working separately and to little effect more than a few lines in the news.
Then a couple of elephants were injured in quick succession; one, Pang Kam Lai, injured when the brakes on the truck transporting her failed, her mahout died and the case captured the imagination of the nation - HM the Queen sent her private staff vet to try to treat the injured elephant's two broken legs, stem cell technology was used and as we speak she's still alive and recovering - Dr Cherry is off on an investigative mission later in the month and will report back.
Various Government departments offered their solutions and I reported on the results after a little street sweep, we were encouraged but saw nothing really new, half a month has passed and it seems that HM the Queen's Royal Elephant Re-introduction Project has teamed up with the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority to launch a new scheme to help.
Described as controversial (I think because the idea of giving money to the mahouts is controversial) the scheme will increase the fines levied on street elephants when caught and offer to buy the mahouts' elephants.
The reporting on this has been somewhat erroneous, somewhere I read that the problem would be solved by micro-chipping the elephants (when they are all already microchipped - particularly the street eles as a lack of microchip is one of the few things that can lead to instant confiscation), that the eles can make up to US$30 (1,025 baht) a night where the Sukhumvit beat can regularly bring in three of four times that amount (our mahouts report, all misty eyed, that 7,000 baht a night was, at one point, achievable), that 500,000 baht is a good price for a baby elephant (500,000 would be the minimum) and, possibly most erroneous of all, reporting that elephants can easily be returned to the wild - as the elephant re-introduction project themselves will tell you the work they do is highly skilled, time consuming, expensive and often dangerous.
Which is what makes the Re-Introduction Foundation's involvement all the more laudable, finding the money to buy the elephant, persuading the mahout to sell for a less-than-market price and - more importantly, ensuring that he does not just borrow a little more money and buy another elephant, bringing that one onto the streets - persuading him to change his reasonably lucrative and generational way of life (these guys have kept elephants for generations) and become a farmer with all the hardships that entails...
...that, all of that, is just the easy part.
The difficult part is to find enough jungle, in 1990 the Asian Elephant Specialist Group of I.U.C.N. estimated a carrying capacity of 17.5 sq. km. of Thai jungle per single wild elephant, and then, more difficult still, is to de-habilitate the elephants to allow them to fend for themselves in the forest which can take up to ten years of highly skilled (non-)handling per elephant.
So, it will be an uphill struggle and, as the CNN video says, it will not happen overnight. I would actually go a step further and say that for anyone else it would be an impossible task but, given the dedication of the Re-Introduction Foundation staff and with the power and respect commanded by the Palace, so obviously behind this initiative, it all suddenly seems possible.
As the rumours started circulating back in January or February that someone in the stratosphere of Thai culture had become concerned with the plight of Thailand's street elephants, various different Government Departments queued up to offer their solutions, often working separately and to little effect more than a few lines in the news.
Then a couple of elephants were injured in quick succession; one, Pang Kam Lai, injured when the brakes on the truck transporting her failed, her mahout died and the case captured the imagination of the nation - HM the Queen sent her private staff vet to try to treat the injured elephant's two broken legs, stem cell technology was used and as we speak she's still alive and recovering - Dr Cherry is off on an investigative mission later in the month and will report back.
Various Government departments offered their solutions and I reported on the results after a little street sweep, we were encouraged but saw nothing really new, half a month has passed and it seems that HM the Queen's Royal Elephant Re-introduction Project has teamed up with the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority to launch a new scheme to help.
Described as controversial (I think because the idea of giving money to the mahouts is controversial) the scheme will increase the fines levied on street elephants when caught and offer to buy the mahouts' elephants.
The reporting on this has been somewhat erroneous, somewhere I read that the problem would be solved by micro-chipping the elephants (when they are all already microchipped - particularly the street eles as a lack of microchip is one of the few things that can lead to instant confiscation), that the eles can make up to US$30 (1,025 baht) a night where the Sukhumvit beat can regularly bring in three of four times that amount (our mahouts report, all misty eyed, that 7,000 baht a night was, at one point, achievable), that 500,000 baht is a good price for a baby elephant (500,000 would be the minimum) and, possibly most erroneous of all, reporting that elephants can easily be returned to the wild - as the elephant re-introduction project themselves will tell you the work they do is highly skilled, time consuming, expensive and often dangerous.
Which is what makes the Re-Introduction Foundation's involvement all the more laudable, finding the money to buy the elephant, persuading the mahout to sell for a less-than-market price and - more importantly, ensuring that he does not just borrow a little more money and buy another elephant, bringing that one onto the streets - persuading him to change his reasonably lucrative and generational way of life (these guys have kept elephants for generations) and become a farmer with all the hardships that entails...
...that, all of that, is just the easy part.
The difficult part is to find enough jungle, in 1990 the Asian Elephant Specialist Group of I.U.C.N. estimated a carrying capacity of 17.5 sq. km. of Thai jungle per single wild elephant, and then, more difficult still, is to de-habilitate the elephants to allow them to fend for themselves in the forest which can take up to ten years of highly skilled (non-)handling per elephant.
So, it will be an uphill struggle and, as the CNN video says, it will not happen overnight. I would actually go a step further and say that for anyone else it would be an impossible task but, given the dedication of the Re-Introduction Foundation staff and with the power and respect commanded by the Palace, so obviously behind this initiative, it all suddenly seems possible.
Posted by John Roberts at Tue, 14 Jul 2009 08:01:00 GMT 
Categories: Regional Elephants
Tags: street elephants bangkok new project
Categories: Regional Elephants
Tags: street elephants bangkok new project
This is really great news.
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BANGKOK, Thailand (CNN) -- A lumbering grey shadow can often catch your eye as you drive along one of Bangkok's most polluted and congested streets, Sukhumvit.
A new plan aims to return street elephants to the wild by paying owners for the animals.
If this were not Bangkok, you would think you'd had one too many beer Singhas, but in this city of contradictions, anything seems, and often is, possible.
And so it is that spotting a huge elephant, dodging the tuk-tuk motorcycle rickshaws, the ubiquitous taxis and blizzard of traffic is nothing out of the ordinary.
I remember seeing my first elephant just outside the front gates of our home here -- and standing in wonderment -- it seemed magical and slightly surreal. I stood and the elephant owner insisted I gave him a dollar -- which I did, just to have the chance to feed this huge creature and stroke its rough, scaly trunk.
But I was naive, like so many tourists and newcomers here, as to the cruelty involved in this "elephant begging."
Over the next three years, I started to notice more and more elephants and see how some seemed distressed; shaking their massive heads from side to side, their eyelash-framed eyes wide with concern and bloodshot.
I wondered why it was allowed and why the government did not do something about it. But then talking to friends and colleagues here I soon realized that this was a problem that successive governors had tried and failed to tackle -- perhaps running up against vested interests and unscrupulous businessmen, who invest in elephants like they would a good stock or a race-horse.
The elephants were often run by criminal gangs and could bring in a healthy $30 per animal per day I was told -- not bad money in Thailand.
A foundation with links to Thailand's Queen is offering to buy elephants from their owners for more than $20,000 -- hoping the owners will instead use the money to buy land or start a more conventional business. The fine for bringing an elephant into the city will rise from just a few dollars to a few thousand.
Watch Rivers' report on elephant begging »
It is already against the law to bring these animals into the city, but that rarely seems to be enforced here, and even if it is, the fine is so small the elephant owners can easily afford to pay it and shrug it off.
Under the new regime, elephants will be sold to the foundation, which in turn will be able to release them back into the world.
Apparently, elephants are one of the few animals that can easily adapt to life without humans, even when they have been born into captivity and are domesticated.
It all sounds brilliant. But I have lived here long enough to know these well-intentioned schemes have a habit of withering into failure. With more than 100 elephants on the streets of Bangkok, I doubt whether all of these majestic animals will be back in a real jungle rather than one rendered from concrete, anytime soon.
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By MICHAEL CASEY
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — Elephants idling outside discos or lumbering through traffic have been part of Bangkok's colorful nightlife for nearly two decades. Now authorities want to send them back to the jungle.
Thai officials say they have come up with an innovative solution: offering the pachyderms for adoption.
Several groups have already paid the estimated 500,000 baht ($14,664) to buy an elephant and relocate it to a reserve in the countryside.
Half of the city's 200 elephants have been relocated since the program began in March, and Bangkok Governor Sukhumphan Boriphat vowed in a glitzy press conference Friday that the rest would be out within a year.
"Roaming elephants can cause accidents, especially at night, and even more importantly are harmful to themselves," Sukhumphan said at a ceremony that featured a marching band, a Thai film actress and several heavyset women who were recent participants in a Miss Jumbo beauty contest.
"It's important that we get elephants out of Bangkok as quickly as possible," the governor said.
Elephants first arrived in Bangkok in the late 1980s after a logging ban made them redundant in forestry work. Since then, they have been trafficked into the city from rural Thailand and even neighboring Myanmar by politically connected gangs who count on corrupt government officials to look the other way.
The elephants' handlers persuade tourists to buy the animals sugar cane and other snacks or use the elephants to promote the sale of ivory trinkets. Many of the animals get hurt when they collide with cars or step into drains or potholes.
The city has tried repeatedly to evict the animals — at one point bringing in trucks to cart them away — only to have the plans undermined by lax enforcement.
This time, the campaign includes putting microchips in the elephants so officials can track their whereabouts, and trying to convince foundations to buy and relocate them.
Once in their new homes, the elephants will be trained to search the forest for their food.
Elephant owners can use the money to get into a new business, and those who refuse reasonable offers will be fined, city officials said.
"They are icons of our country," said Chookiat Prathipasen, deputy secretary general of the Elephant Reintroduction Foundation, which has adopted 63 elephants and plans to take a total of 81. "They should not be treated as pets. They should be treated nearly like humans."
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
FILE - In this May 20, 2002 file photo, a Thai mahout and his infant elephant look for foreign tourist, along Sukhumvit Road in downtown Bangkok, Thailand, After failing repeatedly to clear elephants from Bangkok streets, Thai authorities have come up with an innovative solution: offering them up for adoption. Several groups have already plunked down the estimated 500,000 baht ($14,664, 10,464) to buy an elephant and then relocate it to several reserves in the Thai countryside. (AP Photo/David Longstreath, File)
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