Questions from an African perspective (answers from above the ele camp)
Recently possibly the world's foremost expert in African elephant behaviour, someone with years of experience studying the larger cousins (with fewer toe nails, don't forget) in the wild and in zoos, working out their peccadilloes, the way they talk and the way they think has turned their not insignificant spotlight onto the tricky question of Asian elephant welfare.
In order to gain more information, hopefully preceding a visit, a bunch of us got a list of questions. Being in awe of the questions and the person to whom I am being called upon to give my opinion I spent quite a bit of time on the wording, being a lazy sort of soul I thought I might share my answers with you as the questions were well enough put to call upon me to provide something of a manifesto of what we think we stand for at the moment.
Hope they make sense (the answers, not the questions).
_________________________
While, being a relative newcomer at just seven years, I hate to answer before <...the others...> it is a quiet Sunday morning and they are good questions so I can’t resist.
I will point out that my insights come from building a camp with both a commercial entity and a, separately funded, Thai Registered Foundation that set out originally purely to help save individual elephants from the streets. In building them both we have set up - & then, in some cases mutually dropped – partnerships with several organisations and people; made a million mistakes, hopefully learned from most of them but are still looking for answers to the others.
As we grow the Foundation to the next phase, learning that the one-ele-at-a-time approach isn’t going to cut it, may even make the situation worse, we’re building more partnerships with those who work towards the bigger picture. Very much a work in progress but hopefully my answers can be of some use.
Before I get into the questions, to add a little context, we recently sat down & hammered out two goals for the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation for the future, they may seem a little grand but as we’re talking 25 years we’ve a little time to work out how to achieve them.
‘A sustainable number’ can mean anything from zero (the scientific answer), through a population managed fewer (something I see as obtainable) to a greater number of elephants (something I personally believe would be unsustainable as it would inevitably be based on tourism & she’s a fickle mistress).
I would argue that while there are elephants on the streets (or as they are now, paid by the Government to hang around in Surin & do very little but not yet in what we’d describe as ideal conditions – with the exception of a handful that are helped by more forward looking tourist projects) there is an unsustainably high number of elephants in Thailand at the moment and they are certainly not all comfortable.
For goal number two, once the cultural decision is made – I believe that, culturally, Thailand will always need some elephants – how many elephants are needed we should certainly ensure the best of those that have been looking after elephants for generations are the people looking after the remaining elephants, but if we reduce the number of elephants we will need to reduce the number of mahouts and to do that we must provide attractive alternative incomes.
Bear in mind that the vast proportion of mahouts – the ones we run across anyway – are from one particular people (or tribe for want of a better word), with their own distinct language, traditions and history for whom owning & caring for an elephant is part of their cultural identity. In most cases it is not an easy or lucrative life, they do it because it is who they are and this is the reason that the mahouts who sell elephants immediately look to buy new elephants – that & if they managed to get an above market price, they’ll be in a position to sell another next time the rescuers come to town, who among us wouldn’t look to double our money when offered such an easy, risk free, way to do it?
The trick is going to be how to make the elephants we currently have comfortable (which is going to require money) while not making it so lucrative that others are tempted to buy an elephant and join the trade.
Now, onto the questions:
1) Is it true, or not, that elephants are being smuggled in from Burma for elephant tourism? If yes, what is driving this?
It is true that elephants are being smuggled in from Burma (& probably Laos) to feed a market, given the state of ‘normal’ tourism at the moment I very much doubt that people are buying elephants to go into trekking camps – most of the elephant owners I know have been approaching me to see if the elephants can come to us as the business is bad in the camps – with a revival this may change.
While, of course, all my bananas are paid for by tourists (either as part of our business which sells elephant activities or as donations to our Foundation) so a revival is what I should be looking for, if the Western tourists don’t come back then we may well see Thailand turning to new markets for a source of tourist income – this, I believe, would swing the market back towards more ‘traditional’ activities such as trekking.
For now, though, the only people I hear about buying elephants are those that are buying to ‘rescue’, or traditional mahouts buying to sell to ‘rescue’.
There was previously talk of a gathering of elephants to send to China but last I heard Thai authorities had clamped down on that and those looking to set up camps up there had sourced from Laos.
I think it is safe to say that any elephant bought by anyone outside of the traditional elephant owning families (& probably from within) is in danger of causing another one to be taken from the wild & smuggled in. Particularly now that, thanks to the buy-to-rescue market elephants such as babies and older, injured elephants now have a market value in Thailand it makes sense to me that while ‘traditional’ wild capture would only take the working age animals for the logging industry - & therefore, however repellent, may have been sustainable - there is greater incentive to take the whole herd.
A priority for those of us serious about solving the larger, species wide problems, must be to plug the loopholes in the law that allow for simple smuggling and, in my opinion, to stop buying elephants. To paraphrase a larger (& more crucial) charity: once the buying stops the capture can too.
2) What are the best projects in place for captive elephants? What is OK for captive elephants, and what isn't?
Perhaps I ought to let others answer this question as, of course, I have a vested interest being a project for captive elephants. I like our model of having adult elephants paid for by a business that sells elephant activities, our signature being a programme where the guests ride on the neck and learn a little about what it is like to be a mahout and a Foundation which pays for the elephants unable to take part in the programme – mainly ex street walking babies – to be elephants and grow up with as much freedom and fellow playtime as possible.
We’re not perfect yet by any stretch of the imagination but I feel in a better position to change what I see as the welfare problems of ‘traditional’ management when I’m making it lucrative for the guy who’s resisting to indulge me and do as I ask. In certain cases, they find out it is also easier on them &, for the good mahouts, that it makes their elephant happier. If you take a mahout’s elephant away he’ll never change his ways & if you do it with money he’ll buy another elephant not to change his ways on.
As a wise person once allegedly said, it is very hard to make a man see your point of view when his livelihood depends on him not seeing it. The flip side is that it is a lot easier if it does – still we persuade rather than command, a slow process but one that I feel is working and may have a longer lasting effect, it is very difficult to tell a man that something that has been working well for him and his family for 4,000 years is wrong without giving him an alternative, ideally an alternative that is either easier or more lucrative for him.
To answer the question about what is OK for captive elephants the easy answer would be anything that doesn’t put them in danger of harm & doesn’t unsustainably create more domestic elephants.
When I first arrived I had all sorts of worries about what was or was not demeaning but as time has gone on I’ve come to believe that anything that has the potential to keep them off the chain and occupied, might perhaps allow the mahout to make enough money not to be tempted onto the streets or do an extra hour of trekking in the hot sun has to be an advantage, again, crucially, so long as it is safe & doesn’t expose them to the potential of harm – I do not like to see elephants on their hind or fore legs, I don’t like to see them on a tightrope from which they might fall. In truth, I do not like to see even some of the harmless-but-tacky tricks as I still feel them demeaning but I can see the benefit in them so I bite my tongue. In our camp and with our clientele I’m lucky enough not to have to employ such methods.
I also ought to point out that I don’t see tourist trekking as inherently evil, as far as I’m aware there’s no evidence that the saddle and the weight causes harm to the elephant when properly controlled & there is about 4,000 years of, albeit anecdotal, evidence to suggest it does not. The problems with trekking come through neglect & overwork, incorrect use of harnesses etc.
My experience is that the problems are mainly money based, when a mahout is paid piecemeal or so little that he has to work his elephant too many hours per day in order to feed himself and the elephant, or when, even when not working, the elephant is standing in the sun with the full gear on their back for hours at a time. This is when infections, abrasions & skin problems become a problem, when the mahout is paid piecemeal it is even worse as he is tempted to try & work his elephant through the problems or apply ropes etc. in different places (much like me getting a blister from a flip-flop, try as I might to walk to avoid putting pressure on that point the strap still hits there, the only option is to stop walking – for a mahout & elephant who need to work to eat, this is not seen as an option).
Rather than a campaign to avoid all trekking camps, even though that might help my (non-trekking reliant) business, I would prefer to see a campaign to educate the public which questions to ask, how to tell the camps (& there are some) that are looking after their elephants and mahouts and how to tell those that are pressuring the mahouts to overwork.
An easy way, and even this is self serving, is to find out how much you are paying for your trek, not what you’re paying your guide, how much the camp/mahout gets – if it is 200 baht, the elephant has to work too hard to survive, if the mahout gets 2,000 baht then there’s a good chance that ele can get lots of rest during work days and the mahout or camp can afford for that elephant not to work when he/she gets sick and all will get fed on the slow days. Of course this isn’t a hard and fast rule but it is a good start.
There are agencies & websites working to provide this information – Elefantasia in Laos have an excellent leaflet, I can advise what to write but don’t want to seem to self serving, if we’re going to help the species & those that currently depend on them we need to get away from the ‘don’t come to any camp but mine’ mentality. If I thought we could spread it widely enough I’d be happy to help finance a version for Thailand.
One thing I am sure of though is that the overnight disappearance of guests from Thailand’s trekking camps would not be good for the elephants, it would either see the majority of them immediately out of work and forced to seek a living illegally on the streets or elsewhere or, more probably, would force the camp owners to seek a new market segment for whom animal welfare is not such a priority. However, I feel that encouraging the better camps to improve & lead by example whilst encouraging visitors to travel to them, paying a realistic amount for the experience, could not only drive the bad camps out of business while allowing their elephants to travel to better camps but also drive improvements industry wide – a minimum standard of care, driven by the market but also hopefully by legislation, making it expensive for the business owner to keep elephants should keep the pure profiteers from setting up new camps.
3) What are the pros and cons of different elephant sanctuaries, centres, camps, etc.?
I’ll dodge this question altogether if I may, one thing I think we need to avoid, those of us in the business, is the public finger pointing such a specific answer would require. Suffice to say we all have our own models!
With a very few honourable exceptions on the Government and Royal side we are all businesses (though having a Thai registered Foundation sets us a little apart that’s only 70% of our work – the other 30% is expected to at least break even) that either require guest throughput or ‘donations’ to survive & keep our eles in the style to which they’ve become accustomed, I have no wish to harm anyone else’s business.
If you are in an area and wish to undertake a particular type of elephant activity I am happy to recommend a place.
4) Can elephants be reintroduced to national parks? What information do we have about wild elephant numbers in specific national parks?
To paraphrase Dr Sivaporn, Chair (I believe) of the Royal Re-introduction Project, “what we do is against the law”. At the present time registered elephants are considered domestic livestock so to take them into protected areas is illegal.
This is not to say that there are not areas where, I believe, it would make a great deal of sense to re-introduce elephants to a wild or semi-wild state (every Thai place that attempts completely wild has had some degree of human/elephant conflict – elephants shot or stabbed by outside villagers, even one case of alleged attempted ivory poaching) and that lobbying for a change in the regulations shouldn’t be attempted if we have a strong enough, well put together, argument. Changing policies ingrained over a century or so of forestry will take some time.
We will be visiting & talking with the Elephant Conservation Network over the next few days and, as wild elephants are their field, I hope they will have some up to date estimates for the numbers and opinions on the viability of either small scale or mass re-introduction. The numbers I, for my sins, quote come from the Asian Elephant Specialist group’s ‘The Asian Elephant: An action plan for it’s conservation” whose 1990 figures, if I remember rightly, estimated a carrying capacity for Thailand’s National parks of 1,500 elephants, the current estimate for the number of wild elephants still sits at around 2,000 (though the ECN recently wrote that they suspected closer to 3,000) which makes me wonder how the group arrived at their figure (or whether I read it correctly). However, my gut feeling is that it would be difficult to choose this option for all of the 2,500 – 3,500 officially registered Thai domestic elephants.
As I said, that is not to say that there are not some areas of Government land into which I feel a managed population couldn’t be at least partially released if a change in the legislation was achieved, how we go about that & then removing the elephants from their current owners in such a way as to make sure they didn’t get new elephants (pay them to follow the herd?), persuade the locals that wild(ish) elephants are not a bad thing to have in your backyard etc. would be the next hurdles.
We have been attempting for about four years now to rent various areas of unprotected land from the Government to do just this – the stumbling block, each time (& without mentioning the still controversial idea of ‘free’ elephants) has been huge resistance from the local, non elephant owning public, as each change of land use like this requires a public enquiry. This in spite of carefully worked out employment, profit sharing from any tourism activities (elephant viewing etc.) plus other income generating incentives for the host village.
So far at four attempts & with some very high up Governmental support it is the local village that has shut us down each time.
Not only do they have a fear of elephants many of them are using the forest for their own purposes & don’t like the idea of us taking ownership or working alongside them with elephants. We did recently visit the Elephant Vet Aid Outpost which operates in a large community forest close to a village that has traditionally owned elephants and they are having some success with this model, the Royal Re-introduction project achieved this by putting in reservoirs and providing free irrigation water for the people on the outside of the area – this was and is achieved with Royal backing and perhaps this model will be the one to watch, though even they report several problems including one incident of Human Elephant Conflict (elephant shot).
Hope these answers help & my figures & opinions are not too far astray.
I will point out that my insights come from building a camp with both a commercial entity and a, separately funded, Thai Registered Foundation that set out originally purely to help save individual elephants from the streets. In building them both we have set up - & then, in some cases mutually dropped – partnerships with several organisations and people; made a million mistakes, hopefully learned from most of them but are still looking for answers to the others.
As we grow the Foundation to the next phase, learning that the one-ele-at-a-time approach isn’t going to cut it, may even make the situation worse, we’re building more partnerships with those who work towards the bigger picture. Very much a work in progress but hopefully my answers can be of some use.
Before I get into the questions, to add a little context, we recently sat down & hammered out two goals for the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation for the future, they may seem a little grand but as we’re talking 25 years we’ve a little time to work out how to achieve them.
- For Thailand, in 25 years, to be home to a sustainable number of domestic elephants and for those elephants to be living comfortably.
- For the next generation of mahouts to feel they have a choice but to follow their fathers & grandfathers into mahoutship.
‘A sustainable number’ can mean anything from zero (the scientific answer), through a population managed fewer (something I see as obtainable) to a greater number of elephants (something I personally believe would be unsustainable as it would inevitably be based on tourism & she’s a fickle mistress).
I would argue that while there are elephants on the streets (or as they are now, paid by the Government to hang around in Surin & do very little but not yet in what we’d describe as ideal conditions – with the exception of a handful that are helped by more forward looking tourist projects) there is an unsustainably high number of elephants in Thailand at the moment and they are certainly not all comfortable.
For goal number two, once the cultural decision is made – I believe that, culturally, Thailand will always need some elephants – how many elephants are needed we should certainly ensure the best of those that have been looking after elephants for generations are the people looking after the remaining elephants, but if we reduce the number of elephants we will need to reduce the number of mahouts and to do that we must provide attractive alternative incomes.
Bear in mind that the vast proportion of mahouts – the ones we run across anyway – are from one particular people (or tribe for want of a better word), with their own distinct language, traditions and history for whom owning & caring for an elephant is part of their cultural identity. In most cases it is not an easy or lucrative life, they do it because it is who they are and this is the reason that the mahouts who sell elephants immediately look to buy new elephants – that & if they managed to get an above market price, they’ll be in a position to sell another next time the rescuers come to town, who among us wouldn’t look to double our money when offered such an easy, risk free, way to do it?
The trick is going to be how to make the elephants we currently have comfortable (which is going to require money) while not making it so lucrative that others are tempted to buy an elephant and join the trade.
Now, onto the questions:
1) Is it true, or not, that elephants are being smuggled in from Burma for elephant tourism? If yes, what is driving this?
It is true that elephants are being smuggled in from Burma (& probably Laos) to feed a market, given the state of ‘normal’ tourism at the moment I very much doubt that people are buying elephants to go into trekking camps – most of the elephant owners I know have been approaching me to see if the elephants can come to us as the business is bad in the camps – with a revival this may change.
While, of course, all my bananas are paid for by tourists (either as part of our business which sells elephant activities or as donations to our Foundation) so a revival is what I should be looking for, if the Western tourists don’t come back then we may well see Thailand turning to new markets for a source of tourist income – this, I believe, would swing the market back towards more ‘traditional’ activities such as trekking.
For now, though, the only people I hear about buying elephants are those that are buying to ‘rescue’, or traditional mahouts buying to sell to ‘rescue’.
There was previously talk of a gathering of elephants to send to China but last I heard Thai authorities had clamped down on that and those looking to set up camps up there had sourced from Laos.
I think it is safe to say that any elephant bought by anyone outside of the traditional elephant owning families (& probably from within) is in danger of causing another one to be taken from the wild & smuggled in. Particularly now that, thanks to the buy-to-rescue market elephants such as babies and older, injured elephants now have a market value in Thailand it makes sense to me that while ‘traditional’ wild capture would only take the working age animals for the logging industry - & therefore, however repellent, may have been sustainable - there is greater incentive to take the whole herd.
A priority for those of us serious about solving the larger, species wide problems, must be to plug the loopholes in the law that allow for simple smuggling and, in my opinion, to stop buying elephants. To paraphrase a larger (& more crucial) charity: once the buying stops the capture can too.
2) What are the best projects in place for captive elephants? What is OK for captive elephants, and what isn't?
Perhaps I ought to let others answer this question as, of course, I have a vested interest being a project for captive elephants. I like our model of having adult elephants paid for by a business that sells elephant activities, our signature being a programme where the guests ride on the neck and learn a little about what it is like to be a mahout and a Foundation which pays for the elephants unable to take part in the programme – mainly ex street walking babies – to be elephants and grow up with as much freedom and fellow playtime as possible.
We’re not perfect yet by any stretch of the imagination but I feel in a better position to change what I see as the welfare problems of ‘traditional’ management when I’m making it lucrative for the guy who’s resisting to indulge me and do as I ask. In certain cases, they find out it is also easier on them &, for the good mahouts, that it makes their elephant happier. If you take a mahout’s elephant away he’ll never change his ways & if you do it with money he’ll buy another elephant not to change his ways on.
As a wise person once allegedly said, it is very hard to make a man see your point of view when his livelihood depends on him not seeing it. The flip side is that it is a lot easier if it does – still we persuade rather than command, a slow process but one that I feel is working and may have a longer lasting effect, it is very difficult to tell a man that something that has been working well for him and his family for 4,000 years is wrong without giving him an alternative, ideally an alternative that is either easier or more lucrative for him.
To answer the question about what is OK for captive elephants the easy answer would be anything that doesn’t put them in danger of harm & doesn’t unsustainably create more domestic elephants.
When I first arrived I had all sorts of worries about what was or was not demeaning but as time has gone on I’ve come to believe that anything that has the potential to keep them off the chain and occupied, might perhaps allow the mahout to make enough money not to be tempted onto the streets or do an extra hour of trekking in the hot sun has to be an advantage, again, crucially, so long as it is safe & doesn’t expose them to the potential of harm – I do not like to see elephants on their hind or fore legs, I don’t like to see them on a tightrope from which they might fall. In truth, I do not like to see even some of the harmless-but-tacky tricks as I still feel them demeaning but I can see the benefit in them so I bite my tongue. In our camp and with our clientele I’m lucky enough not to have to employ such methods.
I also ought to point out that I don’t see tourist trekking as inherently evil, as far as I’m aware there’s no evidence that the saddle and the weight causes harm to the elephant when properly controlled & there is about 4,000 years of, albeit anecdotal, evidence to suggest it does not. The problems with trekking come through neglect & overwork, incorrect use of harnesses etc.
My experience is that the problems are mainly money based, when a mahout is paid piecemeal or so little that he has to work his elephant too many hours per day in order to feed himself and the elephant, or when, even when not working, the elephant is standing in the sun with the full gear on their back for hours at a time. This is when infections, abrasions & skin problems become a problem, when the mahout is paid piecemeal it is even worse as he is tempted to try & work his elephant through the problems or apply ropes etc. in different places (much like me getting a blister from a flip-flop, try as I might to walk to avoid putting pressure on that point the strap still hits there, the only option is to stop walking – for a mahout & elephant who need to work to eat, this is not seen as an option).
Rather than a campaign to avoid all trekking camps, even though that might help my (non-trekking reliant) business, I would prefer to see a campaign to educate the public which questions to ask, how to tell the camps (& there are some) that are looking after their elephants and mahouts and how to tell those that are pressuring the mahouts to overwork.
An easy way, and even this is self serving, is to find out how much you are paying for your trek, not what you’re paying your guide, how much the camp/mahout gets – if it is 200 baht, the elephant has to work too hard to survive, if the mahout gets 2,000 baht then there’s a good chance that ele can get lots of rest during work days and the mahout or camp can afford for that elephant not to work when he/she gets sick and all will get fed on the slow days. Of course this isn’t a hard and fast rule but it is a good start.
There are agencies & websites working to provide this information – Elefantasia in Laos have an excellent leaflet, I can advise what to write but don’t want to seem to self serving, if we’re going to help the species & those that currently depend on them we need to get away from the ‘don’t come to any camp but mine’ mentality. If I thought we could spread it widely enough I’d be happy to help finance a version for Thailand.
One thing I am sure of though is that the overnight disappearance of guests from Thailand’s trekking camps would not be good for the elephants, it would either see the majority of them immediately out of work and forced to seek a living illegally on the streets or elsewhere or, more probably, would force the camp owners to seek a new market segment for whom animal welfare is not such a priority. However, I feel that encouraging the better camps to improve & lead by example whilst encouraging visitors to travel to them, paying a realistic amount for the experience, could not only drive the bad camps out of business while allowing their elephants to travel to better camps but also drive improvements industry wide – a minimum standard of care, driven by the market but also hopefully by legislation, making it expensive for the business owner to keep elephants should keep the pure profiteers from setting up new camps.
3) What are the pros and cons of different elephant sanctuaries, centres, camps, etc.?
I’ll dodge this question altogether if I may, one thing I think we need to avoid, those of us in the business, is the public finger pointing such a specific answer would require. Suffice to say we all have our own models!
With a very few honourable exceptions on the Government and Royal side we are all businesses (though having a Thai registered Foundation sets us a little apart that’s only 70% of our work – the other 30% is expected to at least break even) that either require guest throughput or ‘donations’ to survive & keep our eles in the style to which they’ve become accustomed, I have no wish to harm anyone else’s business.
If you are in an area and wish to undertake a particular type of elephant activity I am happy to recommend a place.
4) Can elephants be reintroduced to national parks? What information do we have about wild elephant numbers in specific national parks?
To paraphrase Dr Sivaporn, Chair (I believe) of the Royal Re-introduction Project, “what we do is against the law”. At the present time registered elephants are considered domestic livestock so to take them into protected areas is illegal.
This is not to say that there are not areas where, I believe, it would make a great deal of sense to re-introduce elephants to a wild or semi-wild state (every Thai place that attempts completely wild has had some degree of human/elephant conflict – elephants shot or stabbed by outside villagers, even one case of alleged attempted ivory poaching) and that lobbying for a change in the regulations shouldn’t be attempted if we have a strong enough, well put together, argument. Changing policies ingrained over a century or so of forestry will take some time.
We will be visiting & talking with the Elephant Conservation Network over the next few days and, as wild elephants are their field, I hope they will have some up to date estimates for the numbers and opinions on the viability of either small scale or mass re-introduction. The numbers I, for my sins, quote come from the Asian Elephant Specialist group’s ‘The Asian Elephant: An action plan for it’s conservation” whose 1990 figures, if I remember rightly, estimated a carrying capacity for Thailand’s National parks of 1,500 elephants, the current estimate for the number of wild elephants still sits at around 2,000 (though the ECN recently wrote that they suspected closer to 3,000) which makes me wonder how the group arrived at their figure (or whether I read it correctly). However, my gut feeling is that it would be difficult to choose this option for all of the 2,500 – 3,500 officially registered Thai domestic elephants.
As I said, that is not to say that there are not some areas of Government land into which I feel a managed population couldn’t be at least partially released if a change in the legislation was achieved, how we go about that & then removing the elephants from their current owners in such a way as to make sure they didn’t get new elephants (pay them to follow the herd?), persuade the locals that wild(ish) elephants are not a bad thing to have in your backyard etc. would be the next hurdles.
We have been attempting for about four years now to rent various areas of unprotected land from the Government to do just this – the stumbling block, each time (& without mentioning the still controversial idea of ‘free’ elephants) has been huge resistance from the local, non elephant owning public, as each change of land use like this requires a public enquiry. This in spite of carefully worked out employment, profit sharing from any tourism activities (elephant viewing etc.) plus other income generating incentives for the host village.
So far at four attempts & with some very high up Governmental support it is the local village that has shut us down each time.
Not only do they have a fear of elephants many of them are using the forest for their own purposes & don’t like the idea of us taking ownership or working alongside them with elephants. We did recently visit the Elephant Vet Aid Outpost which operates in a large community forest close to a village that has traditionally owned elephants and they are having some success with this model, the Royal Re-introduction project achieved this by putting in reservoirs and providing free irrigation water for the people on the outside of the area – this was and is achieved with Royal backing and perhaps this model will be the one to watch, though even they report several problems including one incident of Human Elephant Conflict (elephant shot).
Hope these answers help & my figures & opinions are not too far astray.
Posted by John Roberts at Sun, 28 Nov 2010 15:31:00 GMT 
Categories: Thailand Elephants, General Conservation, Regional Elephants
Categories: Thailand Elephants, General Conservation, Regional Elephants
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