Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation

Linguistic oddities (can we link our guys to an older tradition?)

2010-03-07T00:53:00Z

    I'm not an anthropologist, I'm not even an amateur anthropologist, I'm that most annoying of things (regular readers will note in every quasi-scientific field in which I dabble), I'm someone who wishes he was an anthropologist, someone who loves the idea of ideas but can't be bothered with the burden of proof.

    When asked what got me into all of this elephant stuff I usually reply that it wasn't the elephants themselves it was fascination with the lifestyle surrounding them, besides the fact that the mahouts seemed to be having the most fun of all the staff, when, in Chitwan National Park, at Tiger Tops - a place not blighted with karaoke machines and mobile phones (in my day) -, we had an elephant camp party, the old songs were sung in the same way they had been for centuries, the old dances were danced and, it may have been the homemade whisky talking, but there seemed to be a direct link back through the centuries - you got the feeling that mahouts and elephants had been doing this, in this clearing in the jungle since time immemorial.

    On a good night we can still do this in the Golden Triangle, we have to have a special excuse, someone has to be coming to record ancient songs, the ones all the mahouts - you find out during the chorus - know but only the old men will admit to. Oddly, for me who is the opposite, the young men will only sing if there's a microphone and some Laos language country music on a T.V. but turn off the power and come the chorus, given a proper amount of larynx lubrication, even the most hair gelled, fashion conscious of the guys, will reveal they too have spent time around a camp fire in a jungle somewhere and, despite themselves, learned the old songs...

    ...and suddenly there's a connection between these Suay speaking ex-elephant catchers and the Tharu speaking fellows in the jungles across the mountains.

    I've heard two theories that particularly fascinate me and which, if we could ever prove it before a jury of our peers, would point to something far deeper than just a few old songs and a lot of whisky, the first theory, expounded by our consultant, K. Prasop, is that all the traditional elephant caring people are descended from a single tribe - the Munda - who started out in the Himalayan foothills, taking time to lose to Alexander on the banks of the Hydaspes (though in such a way that his armies refused to fight on - if first they sent eles, what would they send next?), moved along the bottom of the Himalaya in Burma an down into South East Asia, catching, taming and using elephants along the way and, coincidentally, leaving their seed as various members settled.

    One thing that points to the idea that there may have been a common ancestral elephant people that set our folks apart from the crowd is that, allegedly, during wild capture every culture that practices it (or remembers practicing it) has a tradition of speaking an entirely separate spirit language when on a catching mission, a language only spoken on the mission and only known to those initiated in the craft of elephant catching.

    Such linguistic precautions make sense to me in a jungle sensitive animistic (or even Buddhist/Hindu with animistic tendencies) culture, if there are spirits out there who speak the same language as you, if they learn of your intentions they'll surely warn their co-spirits, the elephants. So there is some possibility that this developed independently.

    There is also, of course, the possibility that neither theory is true but proving (or disproving) it should be fun and involve lots of elephants, jungle trekking and homemade whisky - any proper anthropologists out there interested?

PS. Aside from gossiping with Prasop what got me started on this was rereading the below article on the history of our guys, Khru Meu will be here later in the month to inaugurate our very own Pakam shrine (not that we're going hunting but no Kui camp should be without one) and we currently have his daughter, Grandson and great Granddaughter living with us - about time we bought his stories to wider attention.
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Elephant whisperers

For centuries, elephants have been a crucial part of the lives of the Kui people in the northeastern province of Surin, whose expertise in catching and taming them has been passed on by their ancestors

They are waving their large lotus leaf-like ears, covered with hairy grey skin. Here, they are lifting their long trunks to take in food. There, they are swimming, making trumpeting sounds. Standing tall are the world's largest land mammals - elephants. Their forebears lived in the wilderness before being captured and tamed by morchang, or elephant whisperers.

The Kui people who used to capture and train wild elephants as an occupation have been dwelling in Ban Ta Klang and nearby villages in Tambon Kra Pho, Tha Tum district of Surin, on the Moon River basin. They are the descendants of mahouts who served Siamese armies in many wars and retired after war on elephant back became obsolete following the end of the war in 1826.

Before 1957, when catching wild elephants became illegal, the Kui people mainly caught and trained wild elephants for domestic use and for sale, and farmed seasonally. In the past, they went to forests, mostly in Cambodia, to capture wild elephants every two or three months.

Catching wild elephants.

The Kui would capture wild elephants under the saek pone method by riding their trained elephants to chase and catch wild elephants. They would throw a loop of pakam leather rope around one of each of the wild elephant's legs.

An elephant catching team would consist of kamluangphued (khrubayai), mor sadam, mor sadiang, mor ja and ma, terms which categorise elephant catchers by their experience. Kamluangphued were the most experienced in everything about elephants and had caught at least 10 to 15 wild elephants, followed by mor sadam at six to 10 wild elephants, mor sadiang with one to five wild elephants and, last but not least, mor ja, who had yet to catch a single wild elephant. Ma (mahouts) would just assist and sit behind elephant catchers on elephant back. Ma have never taken part in the pachi ritual, a rite of passage for morchang, or elephant catcher.

"Men aged 14 and up can become morchang. I dreamed of becoming morchang since I was young. It has run in my family for centuries, since my ancestors' time. Our Kui tribe has been living here for generations," Meu Sala-ngam, a 81-year-old mor sadam at Ban Ta Klang, said.

Uncle Meu was born at Ban Ta Klang in 1928. He is a Kui a-jiang (Kui elephant raiser). At 11, he started learning the science of controlling elephants from khrubayai Kaew Suksri and Thao Sala-ngam. He worked hard as a ma (mahout) and accompanied his teachers to catch wild elephants. At the age of 20, he entered the rite of passage (pachi) to become morchang and began leading a caravan to capture wild elephants in Cambodian forests along the Phanom Dongrak Range two or three times a year. He tamed and trained the captured wild elephants and selected good ones to become breeders. At 25, he was appointed mor sadam. Currently, he is highly respected as the only surviving khrubayai. He is a moral man who excels in the art of capturing, taming, training, healing and selecting elephants. He has taken part in over 40 elephant catching trips and himself captured 16 wild elephants.

For all Kui male teens, elephant catching was a big test for them to become men. Pending training, they would only be ma (mahouts) and had to be strictly obedient to kamluangphued and other morchang. The captured wild elephants were like diplomas to prove their bravery and elevate their social status.

"Since I was born, I have seen elephants all around me. I've been with them since I was a boy," Uncle Meu said about his close bond with elephants.

For generations, the Kui people here have been taught to respect the rule of nature and elephants. Respecting elephants is equal to worshipping the pakam shrines and progenitors. To them, elephants are family.

"Starting from age 14, we learned how to handle elephants. We learned by ourselves. We memorised the elders' words without writing anything down," he said.

Giving offerings to the ‘sarn pakam’, or shrine.

Then he recalled the first time he caught a wild elephant.

"I accompanied my father and was able to catch an elephant right away. It's easy if we have talent. I just used a lasso and a pakam leather rope. No need to lure elephants with anything. Any wild elephants would run away and we would just throw a loop of rope around one of their legs and then chase them," the man added.

Prior to elephant catching, morchang need to perform blessing rituals.

"Before departing, we would figure out auspicious times for giving offerings to the sarn pakam (shrine) and start the trip. It took three days to prepare for a trip to Cambodian forests and over 10 days to travel," Uncle Meu said.

During each trip, morchang and their families would have to strictly abide by the rules and taboos. For example, morchang must not throw hooks or ride newly caught elephants. Sitting on staircases or by windows, using brooms or throwing things out of their houses are forbidden; otherwise, morchang will fall from the backs of the elephants.

"In the past, there were a lot of wild elephants. Each herd usually numbered 50 to 60. Catching an elephant required two men and about five minutes by just throwing a loop of rope. Both morchang and elephants were watchful. We couldn't make mistakes or be too choosy. Sometimes we got seven elephants, sometimes only one or none," he added.

According to him, becoming a good morchang requires over 10 years of experience.

"Anyone wants to get good elephants, but we couldn't be choosy. A good elephant has lotus leaf-like ears, banana trunk-like legs, a beautiful straight tail and a big trunk," Uncle Meu said.

After returning to their village, morchang performed the sen phi pakam ritual again. A blessing ceremony and a celebration for the newly caught pachyderms followed.

Morchang sold some of those elephants and kept some to work and ride to capture more wild elephants.

According to Uncle Meu, no magical spells are needed to train elephants. What morchang do is just teach elephants like students, comfort them and pat their necks. Whenever they do wrong, they will be told not to do it again. If necessary, they may be hit softly.

"Elephants possess different personalities like humans. They are either kind or mean. However, training elephants is easier than teaching humans," he noted.

Seventy-seven-year-old Ya Sala-ngam, a mor sadiang, recalled that this tambon used to have hundreds of elephant catchers who were from every family here because the Kui people know the nature of elephants very well.

"Men raise elephants while women weave silk," he said. "There are no new morchang because catching wild elephants is illegal."

The last time Uncle Ya captured a wild elephant was in 1957. Now there are only five kui morchang left in Thailand.

Uncle Meu added that: "I feel sorry [about the end of this ancient occupation]. What I can do is to pass on the knowledge to my offspring. Now, they know a lot about elephants, but have no chance to go catch wild elephants."

Despite no more elephant catching, morchang have been using their skills to educate the general public at Elephant Village and help ill elephants.

Uncle Meu is occasionally asked to lead other morchang to capture ailing wild elephants in the forests so that authorities can send the pachyderms to hospital. His team has been to the woods in Kanchanaburi, Chachoengsao and Prachuap Khiri Khan for such missions.

"Only two of us, Uncle Ma [a mor ja] and I, went into the jungle and were able to catch that ill elephant in one day. We threw a loop of rope around his neck instead of his leg because he's crippled," Uncle Meu said about his trip in Prachuap Khiri Khan.

At present, Uncle Meu has six elephants of his own. Unlike many other elephant owners, he never takes his elephants to Bangkok or big cities to beg for money. However, he leases his elephants to tour operators in Pattaya and Chiang Rai.

"Poverty forces elephant owners out of their hometowns. Elephants can help their owners earn small incomes. Last year, the rice fields here were damaged by floods, so many elephant owners had to take elephants to the big cities. It's dangerous, but they try hard to avoid accidents," he said.

According to a research paper from the Senate Sub-committee on Natural Research, An Extensive Study on Solving Problems of Domesticated and Wild Elephants in Thailand, unemployment, as a result of the ban on logging since 1987, has led to a new approach for elephant owners to earn their living. Many elephants have been roaming into the cities. They have been in poor health due to the chaotic environment and pollution. Some of them were hit by cars, plunged into open holes or suffered from heat stroke.

Now this type of roaming has declined and a new problem has emerged. Calved elephants are forced to perform in circuses. Some of them are caught from the jungle after poachers kill the elephant cows. There is also the problem where elephants are fed with amphetamines and forced to serve illegal logging or illicit businesses.

Currently, Surin has approximately 560 elephants and neighbouring Buri Ram province has 150. Of these, 140 are participating in the Surin Provincial Administration Organisation and the Zoological Organisation's "Elephants Return Home" programme. On a 2,000-rai (320 hectare) land plot at Elephant Village, Surin, the elephant owners grow crops to feed their pachyderms and receive a monthly subsidy of 8,000 baht per head. In return, their elephants must perform in educational and entertaining programmes at the village.

According to a report by the Elephant Village, 343 other elephants from Surin and Buri Ram are being hired at elephant centres nationwide. Another 106 pachyderms are roaming in Bangkok and big cities, and 117 are wandering upcountry.

Under a Sept 9, 2009 cabinet resolution, a budget of 22 million baht was approved to run the Elephants Return Home project. Moreover, all 3,825 home elephants in Thailand must be registered within two years and the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry must set up a problem-solving panel and speed up issuance of the Elephant Act.

Surin Governor Wichian Chavalit said two major problems relating to elephants in general are unemployment for mahouts and food shortages for elephants.

To end the plight, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration is running the Chang Yim (smiley elephants) Project to send all the roaming elephants back home by July this year and to realise sustainable happy living.

Bangkok Governor MR Sukhumbhand Paribatra said, "Elephants are the national symbol. They are clever, sensitive and need special care. Our objective is to conserve Thai elephants."

His deputy, Teerachon Manomaipiboon, promised to seek a budget of 100 million baht to construct living quarters for the elephants and their owners at the Elephant Village and to promote the growth of elephant feeds. "The elephant owners can also operate home-stay businesses to attract tourists and raise incomes. Within three years, they should be able to earn enough money and live happy lives," he noted.

Uncle Meu, the respected morchang, agreed that the best solution is to encourage the elephant owners to return home along with their pets. He also urged the implementation of more similar projects to help elephants.

"At this elephant centre, life is easy and fun. No one wants to go to Bangkok," he said, "We can't live without elephants. Without them, we can't be happy."

Ecotourism, Egotourism? (is it just time for a new word?)

2010-03-01T00:45:00Z

    After all these years hanging about elephants and tourists (as well as jungles in the early days) I don't think we've ever referred to what we do as Ecotourism, especially the latter more-than-half of my career sitting in a 77 room five star hotel - a few journalists have sneaked the E-word in but I'm not sure we ever have.

    Reading the piece below reawakened my interest in the idea of just what Ecotourism might be and what the world understands it to be - I have long harboured a suspicion that there is a vast difference in understanding between those small scale operators and (in some cases) politicians in the fragile areas of the world that we go to visit and the would-be visitors on the other side of the world (in the bit we damaged some centuries ago).

    I asked google for a definition and got a large number of broadly similar sentences, the one closest to my understanding was "Responsible travel to natural areas supporting the fauna, flora, and local economy" from something called Wikictionary.

    Funnily enough there was nothing there that said you also had to be living uncomfortably so, while there would be a great debate about the energy footprint of a large hotel-like structure (something we strive to reduce) over a hand made shack in the jungle, I think we could probably qualify - we certainly support the local economy in a way far greater than a local guest house, 200+ plus staff from the local area working the best paid jobs in the region, local purchases of food and fodder etc.

    Flora, well, the elephant camp's unfortunate tendency to eat everything in site would push any claims to help that onto thin ice - though with protected areas around the site and the gardeners slowly moving toward native species perhaps we could get away with it.

    Fauna, well, bingo under that heading - not talking about elephants, our girls are domestic so probably don't count in this equation; but in our prevention of hunting on site which has provided what is the only decent dawn chorus for miles around as well as our support for local ornithologists I think we score nicely.

    Still, and largely thanks to our size of operation, our pricetag and our large, brick building Ecotourism purists would consider me to be stretching the definition somewhat and there are certainly some well thought out places that fit the definition far better, though they have their own way of operation and their own target audience subtly different from our own.

    But enough of 'our' definition, what of the other definition? Dramatically embodied below by the man suggesting they capture wild Indonesian elephants and train them for use in 'ecotourism' concerns. By whose definition can removing an endangered wild species from a human degraded ecosystem, subjecting it to physically arduous training methods and then using it to carry tourists be considered ecotourism?

    Well, I would posit that it would be by the definition of a large number of local operators who paint Ecotourism on their signs worldwide, folks for whom the definition stops at the "travel to natural areas".

    Just because there's a tree in the backyard and you're sleeping on a hard bed doesn't make it ecotourism, indeed some of the greatest inequalities that I have seen between what the operator gets and what he gives to the community happen in the more rudimentary operations and just because we, the five star hotel, don't paint the word on our sign or bandy it around to describe what we do doesn't mean we don't enormously help the local community, flora and fauna.

    Choose your travel operator wisely, there are many that understand the difference, there are some that don't.
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Wild elephants roam in Chevron operational area (Indonesia)

The Jakarta Post

January 3, 2010

Dozens of wild elephants have been roaming in the operational area of US-based leading oil producer Chevron Pacific Indonesia (CPI) in Duri district, Riau over the past week, but the provincial natural resources conservation agency has no plans to capture the giant mammals.

Head of the agency, M. Hutomo, said Wednesday evacuation of the elephants would spark a conflict between humans and the protected animals, which have been displaced from their habitat due to its conversion into palm oil plantations and residential areas.

“Capturing the elephants will not solve the problem. The best solution is to domesticate the elephants for ecotourism interests and the delivery of oil palm kernels,” Hutomo told Antara state news agency.

The agency is deploying a team to monitor the elephants on a daily basis. Hutomo said the elephants had not caused damage to the oil company’s property as they only were only seeking leaves to eat.

Article at the following link:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/02/03/wild-elephants-roam-chevron-operational-area.html

What do you mean you can't see it? It's an elephant son....

2010-02-15T04:15:00Z

    Even though they don't have trunks it is not easy, in the grand scheme of things, to tell if your mahouts are going blind, when it comes down to it everything they use for their daily work, from the beasts themselves to the dung they sweep, the food they eat - there's nothing too fiddly about elephants.

    So it was only when Lyn Hammett, our volunteer mahout English teacher, began her monthly visits did we begin to notice that some of our guys would be better off in a cave or waving a white stick about; had been, for years, finding the correct elephant each day through smell and the correct house each night through pure blind luck - though seeing some of the stuff they wear on their days off we ought to have guessed there was more than just an element of being sartorially blessed.

    Some might thing that it doesn't really matter if the mahouts can't see too well if they're going to live in the forest, bank notes are colour coded, as are beer bottles and snakes; however, we're a modern camp, we like our guys to have a taste for foreign languages, to sign contracts and insurance documents and, eventually, slowly, get the hang of these here computer thingies (Tony, Pumpui's weekend (when he's not in school) has just received a lovely laptop computer from the www.elerescue.org project.

    So from this an idea grew a larger project, Lyn has some contacts at Thailand's premier opticians, Top Charoen, and we have contacts in places where eye tests really matter, in schools: traditionally even bright pupils have been diagnosed not-so-clever or trouble makers all for want of being able to properly see the board.

    We invited Top Charoen's mobile clinic to visit our polo pitch and set up camp while arranging the kids from local schools, this time particularly our old friends from Doi Sa Ngo, to come and get their eyes tested...

Opticians from Top Charoen branches in Bangkok, Mae Sai and Chiang Saen took part...

...the Doi Sa Ngo kids still dress up in their formal Akha dress for special occasions...

...and somehow the test glasses don't look too far out of place.

The mahouts also got in on the act.

Lung Lun looking particularly dashing in his pair of the free sunglasses that Top Charoen bought for all the guys with jobs in the sun.

...and a group photo with the traditional tall and pale person from another world photoshopped into the back.

Eating elephants, a habit difficult to stomach?

2010-02-08T01:19:00Z

    It is not often in my quest to bring you all sorts of elephant trivia that I have to warn the squeamish among you to look away now, but, well, if you're squeamish please look away now.

    This is an old, old oddity that first popped up onto my radar a couple of months ago and pricked my morbid fascination with all things elephant. Having previously bought you news of the taste of Vietnamese elephants, third hand through the palate of a starving exiled North Vietnamese politburo member and possibly mentioned my belief that the only Asian tradition for eating elephant meat was up on the Burmese/Indian border somewhere I was slightly taken aback to find this piece in the mainstream English language Thai press.

    Apparently there is an ex-logging village in Phrae province of Thailand that has a taste for elephants also, reduced nowadays to actively seeking out carcasses of dead elephants and having them shipped up from Surin. The mayor and the Governor seem to believe this could become a tourist attraction but I'm not convinced, in fact, I have to admit that I hope it doesn't.

    As is typical for me I tried to boil it down (if you'll pardon the pun) to the bare bones of the matter, could this odd habit become harmful to elephant conservation and the species? My feeling, after some debate with a far better conservationist than I who had some concerns, was not at this stage - given the price of a carcass is given at 30,000 baht and the market value of a live elephant is at least ten (& more like twenty) times that, there would be very little incentive for anyone to deliberately let their elephants die for this purpose - which would mean our poor villagers must be eating aged and diseased elephants which, one feels, can't be too good for their digestion.

    Tourism provides another worry, as long as 30,000 baht is all you'll get for an elephant then I can't see much worry, the villagers stress that they never killed the elephants specifically for the meat or hunted wild elephants in the forest but it is not difficult to see the need for elephant meat as a 'tourist attraction' outstripping the supply leading to price increases - when your new found tourism livelhood, hotel or restaurant, depends on you having meat on the menu the cost of not having a carcass pushes that 30,000 higher.

    Price increases can lead to temptations to try to tap into Thailand's wild herd: the catching of a live wild elephant is a complex and dangerous operation, once undertaken by large teams of highly skilled people, it would be difficult to achieve in secret - the logistics involved should, I feel, be enough to deter people from undertaking this illegal activity - however, the shooting of one for meat would, one assumes, be easier to hide and would require skills that don't need to be learned through generations.

    The other conservation problem I could see is if there is still some wild capture going on illegally in the area and, given the alleged mortality rate, this could help recoup some of the costs - but I personally doubt this and if I were a lawmaker would see it more beneficial to stamp out the wild capture rather than outlaw an odd habit.

    So, if I find myself in Phrae I might pop up to Wiang Thong for a beer and a sticky beak, but I don't think - even though I pride myself on never saying no to an odd meal - that I'll partake of the barbeque and I don't think we should encourage others to do so lest a seemingly harmless and more-than-slightly (and perhaps literally) distasteful habit turns into something more sinister.
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Elephant eaters see no shame in jumbo meal

Villagers in Phrae province sustained by pachyderms in death, as they were in life

When elephant meat becomes available at a small village in Phrae province, fanciers of the rare meal are quick to buy up the treat.

PUT HIM TO WORK: Forestry officials use elephants in patrolling forests to prevent illegal logging in the North,

''On a day that elephant meat is available in the village, it is eagerly snapped up and sells out in no time,'' said Uncle Pao, 73, from Wiang Thong village in Sung Men district where elephant meat costs 100 baht a kilogramme. ''Nobody wants to buy other kinds of meat.''

Despite the cultural cringe of the national symbol finding its way on to the dinner plates of villagers, the people of Wiang Thong have no remorse about consuming elephant meat when they can.

Their ancestors had a close relationship with the animals which were used for logging, and the consumption of a carcass is simply viewed as the elephant providing sustenance for the villagers. The local governor believes it can become a tourist attraction, and the practice of eating elephant meat is already attracting curious onlookers from neighbouring provinces.

Wiang Thong village was once a vibrant logging area before the government ordered the closure of forests across the country in 1988 to prevent illegal logging.

Wilaiwan Chindamanee, 55, a female kamnan or sub-district chief of Wiang Thong district, said there were about 400 elephants in the village about 27 years ago.

At that time, elephants and their owners worked for the Forest Industry Organisation and logging provided most of the villagers with a livelihood.

CHOICE CUTS: Cut pieces of a dead elephant is prepared for sale and consumption in Wiang Thong village in Phrae,

Sanan Chindamanee, 55, a former kamnan of Wiang Thong, and husband of Mrs Wilaiwan, said: "Many logging companies paid us to transport logs using elephants. Sometimes we went to work as far away as Burma."

Elephant owners and mahouts in the village grouped together as an association. When an elephant died, each member would chip in 400 baht and the money was given to the owner of the dead elephant to buy a new one. But when the logging ban was enforced the villagers were made jobless and many had to sell their elephants to survive.

Mr Sanan said that after a foreign reporter visited Wiang Thong village eight years ago to cover the practice of elephant eating, untrue stories emerged that they were killing the elephants.

"We only eat meat from dead elephants," said Mr Sanan.

"It's impossible for us to kill elephants. They are very expensive. Even back then, they cost between 50,000 baht and 100,000 baht."

NOTHING WASTED: Chamlong Sanpapao, leader of a team skilled in cutting up an elephant carcass, shows a bottle containing fluid taken from the glands on the sides of the head of elephants. The fluid is believed to have magical properties.

Mr Sanan said villagers develop a close bond with their elephants from childhood and always feel grateful to the pachyderms for their usefulness. The death of an elephant is always mourned by villagers.

When it comes to the meat, a team of men skilled in cutting up an elephant carcass is called in.

Before cutting up the carcass, a rite is performed to apologise to the elephant for what they will do.

The reputation of the team preparing the carcass has spread to elephant owners in Surin, the northeastern province famous for capturing, taming and training wild elephants.

When elephants die there, elephant owners in Surin contact Wiang Thong villagers to come and buy the elephant carcass. Mr Sanan said some elephant owners in Surin give away carcasses for free and came to the village to witness for themselves the practice of eating elephant meat.

Chamlong Sanpapao, 46, who heads the team that cuts and prepares elephant meat, said in the past people believed that eating elephant meat could boost physical strength and promote longevity.

TOOTHY: Sanan Chindamanee, left, and Wilaiwan, his wife, with elephant teeth kept as mementos,

Mr Chamlong said villagers pay a lot of money to buy elephants. "When they die, their owners don't want to get rid of their carcass. They still can make money selling their carcass," Mr Chamlong said.

An elephant carcass can fetch between 10,000 and 30,000 baht, he said.

Mr Chamlong said practically every part of an elephant body is valuable, particularly its tusks.

Even its bones are made into decorative items or talismans.

Of the body parts, an elephant penis is considered a delicacy which requires a complicated cooking procedure, said Mr Chamlong.

In the past, if an elephant died in the forest, a "hunting" team would be sent to find the carcass and then the cutting would follow. But such teams no longer exist because most elephants die in cities, said Mr Sanan.

Phrae governor Somchai Hatayatanti said the practice of eating elephant meat in Wiang Thong village had attracted curiosity from outside.

FORM A QUEUE: An entrance and an access road leading to Wiang Thong village,

It is one of the province's rarities and could be promoted as a tourism attraction, he said.

Permanent secretary for natural resources and environment Saksit Treedet said the number of elephants in Thailand, both wild and domesticated, is declining rapidly.

The latest survey shows there are no more than 5,000 elephants in the country and it is predicted that if no serious effort is made to help save them, they could become extinct within 14 years, Mr Saksit said.

Sitthidej Mahasawangkul, director of the Lampang-based Elephant Hospital, has advised mahouts and elephant owners to take special care of elephants, particularly sick and old ones, during the cold season.

Cold weather can have an immediate effect on the health of elephants, Mr Sitthidej warned.

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<:od>PS. As ever, I have to argue with the ascertion that the population of domestic elephants is declining rapidly as all other evidence (including Government figures) points to the opposite.

...another date for your V.C.R's (you lucky, lucky things)

2010-01-19T01:07:00Z

...but you are lucky, lucky things not only for being able to watch the incomparable Mr Varun Sharma ride the equally incomparable Yuki (and see me give an interview knee deep in mud - for you've seen that before and they'll probably cut it anyway) for having been spared the wrath of my spleen for so long.

    Life here in the Golden Triangle has been extremely hectic through the high season with all the eles seemingly spread over all four corners of our little piece of jungle but all happy, I have many, many things to share through these pages and as time goes by I hope to get around to commenting on a few news-of-the-day pieces too.

    You were spared for a few more days due to the drop in the inter net, some worms invaded places that worms shouldn't be and suddenly we were gloriously and frustratingly isolated up here - just me, some lovely guests and the eles.

    Oh, also, before I forget, a belated by no less sincere Happy New Year to one and all, I've a feeling it will be a big one for the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation and our partners (from the smallest elephant to the largest donors, you are all partners).

    For a first post of the New Year we'll start slowly with a recommendation to try and catch us on TV, but there is more to come (I promise!).

    It looks as though you'll be able to see shots of the time we spent with Varun in the UK on the 25th & 28th of February at 7pm with a repeat on with a repeat on 7th of March at 11pm and in Europe and the Middle East on the 23rd of Feb. at 2 in the morning and 9 in the evening, the 24th at 7pm, 27th at 7 in the morning and 5pm - all G.M.T.

    Full listings are available from here.

...on why it is important to keep mahouts smiling if you want to put a smile on an elephant's face.

2009-12-21T00:58:00Z

    It seems odd but, in this cut and thrust world we live in, I am often asked whether we treat our mahouts too well? I'm not going to point fingers and name names but there is a great perception there in the outside world that perhaps we've gone a step or two too far in cosseting our elephant owning friends by not only catering to the every whim of their elephants but by covering enough of their living costs that they are seen to have the same level disposable income that, for instance, a normal hotel employee would have, several steps up from hand to mouth villager; all the mahouts, it seems, now have mobile phones and we must have the highest percentage of Toyota Hiluxes and shiny new motorbikes among the staff than any other ele camp in the world - that all the money we pay now goes to pay off bank loans is not necessarily my fault, I offer free ele care, not financial advice (though, being me, I have been prone to asking a few folks whose income I know intimately because I sign the cheques whether they are not just a little crazy).

    It is also true that villagers who started delivering elephant food to our four elephants six years ago used to borrow farmer's single cylinder diesel engine powered trucks (glorified rotivators, lot e-ten in local parlance) now deliver in shiny pick-ups.

    To be honest it makes me feel good to see, but we do set ourselves up as a scientific charity and there's always the question, where's the line? At what point do you cease to protect what you set out to save? At what point do you breed reliance on your project and therefore become unsustainable?

    I have to admit, if I were a mahout's son, I wouldn't choose to follow in my father's footsteps (though you could probably guess this of me as even though I wasn't a mahout's son I didn't follow in my father's footsteps), however I don't come from a strong tribal tradition where my father's trade is also my cultural identity - those farmers out there may understand the connection rather better than me, why would you choose a trade that you know will be tough and never make you any money?

    So let's admit it is in the blood, as part of their identity these guys have to own an elephant (and the validity and purpose of that cultural identity in the modern world is a debate I keep promising you I'll have), but elephants don't grow on trees and they can no longer be caught from the wild so somebody has to procure an elephant, the luckiest have one born to the family but even then there are stud fees and, of course, the cost of raising the elephant until it can earn a living. Those that don't have an elephant have to find one from somewhere and that, in the vast majority of cases, involves borrowing money - either from the banks or, as an elephant isn't really good collateral, from less formal places (who, of course, carry their own terms).

    Once you have the elephant, though, the job isn't over, the forest to let them go and forage between jobs no longer exists so you find yourself with a very large mouth to feed in addition to the more normal human task of looking after your family and in order to do that you must follow your chosen (or that which is thrust upon you) profession - you must go and be a mahout.

    For those of us in the business of trying to provide an alternative lifestyle for the elephant than living on the street or working hour after hour in trekking camps I believe it is essential that we start looking at mahout and elephant as small business units in their own right, that we don't look at the rent we pay as a handout or a wage, that we don't look at the fodder we give as a gift to help underprivileged people - it is not enough to provide just what is required and expect them to be grateful for the honour of survival, we wouldn't consider argument with normal employees (who among us would consider working just to make ends meet, who doesn't want a quality of life, a chance to save for the future?) why would we consider it with our mahouts.

    Now, I see the argument that we shouldn't over pamper, that if life gets too comfortable then it will be difficult to dissuade sons from following fathers and in the grand, scientific, sense sons following fathers in this particular tradition is something that we should ask ourselves whether we want to encourage but, at this stage in the proceedings the official policy is to maintain or even increase the domestic population - if this is your policy you will need the next generation of instinctive, born-on-the-elephant, mahouts.

    Quite apart from anything else, if the good mahouts default on their loans the elephants fall into the hands of those who don't know much about elephants at all but know all about making money and, whatever your vision for the future of domestic elephants, that can't be a good thing for the present herd.

    So, sound business reasons aside, I don't feel too guilty for the over pampering, whatever your reasons for wanting elephants off the streets it makes conservation sense to ensure the people who you are asking to change their way of life are comfortable in the place you want them to be and, as every politician and Public Relations Officer knows, if you are going to preach your crazy ideas, it always helps to make sure your audience has a full belly and a few fun toys to play with.

Wild elephants in San Francisco? (a date for your West Coast diary)

2009-12-12T01:04:00Z

    For those of you with spare time on your hands in the Bay area tomorrow (12/12/09), I can highly recommend popping down to the San Francisco Silent Film Festival at 11.30 in the morning to catch "Chang: A drama of the wilderness".

    The movie is great not only for it's wild elephant scenes, at one point they destroy a village but as a historical document on two levels - firstly they filmed a wild elephant capture using the kraal method, something only catchable nowadays in darkest Myanmar (and happily so I might add) and secondly as a document of our attitudes towards nature, both in Thailand and in the West in 1927.

    The movie is without a doubt a miracle of film making given the technology available in those days shooting in what is an obviously wild jungle but I'm not sure a New York audience would stand in rapturous applause nowadays when a tiger is obviously shot live on the film or a wild baby elephant was dragged from a pit and tied to a house pillar.

    I reviewed the movie, and the mahouts' reactions, once before in these 'ere pages.
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Date

From December 12, 2009 11:30 AM
Until December 12, 2009 1:00 PM

Location

The Castro Theatre
429 Castro St
San Francisco, CA 94114

[map it!]

Info Line

1-800-838-3006

Website

http://www.silentfilm.org

Contact

Silent Film Festival
833 Market St
Suite #812
San Francisco, CA 94103
415.777.4908
boxoffice@silentfilm.org

Sales have ended for this event. Tickets may still be available at the door.

Description

11:30 AM
CHANG: A DRAMA OF THE WILDERNESS
Produced and Directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack (USA, 1927)
Cast: Kru, Chantui, Nah, Ladah, Bimbo

Shot entirely in Siam (present-day Thailand), Schoedsack and Cooper's thrilling adventure is clearly the prototype for their later masterpiece KING KONG - and a spellbinding success in its own right. The publicity of the time touted a cast of 500 native hunters, 400 elephants, tigers, leopards, pythons, and other denizens of the wild! Chang is a simple story of one family's survival on their small farm on the edge of the jungle - a way of life that often pits them against forces of nature. The film was nominated (along with Murnau's SUNRISE and Vidor's THE CROWD) for "Artistic Quality of Production" at the first ever Academy Awards.

35mm print from Milestone Film & Video. Approximately 68 minutes.

Donald Sosin will accompany Chang on the piano with an original score.

Introduced by Merian C. Cooper biographer Mark Vaz.

Notes

Free admission for children under 12. No ticket necessary!

Just when you thought it was safe to play favourites (it turns out they exhibit relative quantity judgement)

2009-12-09T06:37:00Z

    If you come to my camp and ask me which is my favourite elephant I'll tell you that I don't have one, can't have one, and that they are all equal to me.  Apart from the fact that is an outright lie it seems to me to be a sensible policy, you don't get Bodo or Michel telling you which is their favourite department head, no-one ever asks Amp who is her favourite mahout - the difference between myself and the above mentioned professionals is, of course, that you only have to hang around in camp awhile and my obvious favouritism shines through.

    Favouritism to the point that I recently, pretending to be professional, challenged a journalist to an electronic guessing game and refused to divulge my favourite until he guessed it within about three e-mails (those flying Emirates Air this December can find this out for themselves as he went and printed - luckily though, I can rely safely assume none of the other potentially jealous girls and boys will get to read it as 1, we don't think they can read and 2, they are unlikely to find themselves in Emirates Business Class as I am too tight to pay for a ticket for their Christmas holidays, the ticket itself is OK, it is the excess baggage that gets me - packed trunk and all that).

    But we know from a thousand years of anecdotes that eles have a good memory and can hold a grudge as well as a candle. So at times like this when I've got a couple of bags of sunflower seeds in my office (I was in town yesterday buying stuff for an ele dung project when I saw them and couldn't resist) which I go out and feed to the eles a handful at a time, how careful do I need to be not to slip an extra handful to the eyelid flashing favourite of today?

    Well, according to a paper that has been sitting on my desktop for some time (Relative quantity judgment by Asian elephants by Naoko Irie-Sugimoto, Tessei Kobayashi, Takao Sato and Toshikazu Hasegawa) very.

    As you'd expect it, not wanting to give myself a headache, it was the relative quantity judgment bit of the title that had it gathering dust until I worked out what the phrase really meant and that, scientist being scientists, they couldn't really say 'counting'.

    Actually, and in fairness, not quite: R.Q.J. (as those of us in the know call it) doesn't necessarily mean counting, it just means the ability to look at too separate quantities and judge which is the greater - not quite the same thing. What our clever Japanese friends did was to fill two bowls with different amounts of bananas and allowed elephants to choose just one - the eles themselves unerringly (well statistically speaking) picked the fuller bowl, something that seems to make sense but apparently the behaviour was only previously seen in non-human apes and cotton top tamarins.

    Where elephants split away from other tested animals, apart from ourselves, was the way they coped with disparity and magnitude effects (again a phrase that the scientists felt, quite rightly, that they had to explain to me) - while the cleverer primates could quite easily tell the difference between a bowl with one piece of bait and one with six pieces, routinely choosing the fuller, it seems they had troubles choosing the better between a bowl of three and a bowl of four; elephants, it seems had no such worries.

    So far, so clever, elephants pick the fuller bowl of food and can weigh up the better between two options while realising the zero sum nature of the game - the other bowl gets taken away - instead of instinctively reaching for something just because it is food, further still they're better at making finer judgments than anything so far tested (on a par with human children).

    But, being scientists, Naoko-san and friends decided to push it a step further, what if instead of letting the elephants see the bait in both bowls they could only watch both bowls being loaded and then choose before they got to see what was in a bowl? Well, blow me away if elephants (albeit a different set of elephants - making this even more convincing) couldn't do that as well, they watched the hand movements, heard the thump as the bait hit the bottom of the bowl, remembered which number of noises corresponded to which bowls and then chose the bowl with the greater number of previously loaded bait.

    Sorry Roy, but this isn't trigger on stage stamping his foot, this is a not-so-hungry (but famously food obsessed) beast counting and remembering actions that they know can be associated with amounts of sweet stuff.

    The researchers concluded that the reason for this reasoning may be an ancient necessity to work out the size of an approaching herd, or an ability to count mateable females before signing allegiances, but who knows?

    They were also confused that while all eles (though they were pre-screened for willingness to take part) performed well in the experiments, one (with the auspicious initials T.R.) couldn't grasp the disparity factors and fell apart when the amounts in each bowl were both large and close to each other - well, I can hazard a guess on that one, we know not all eles are uniquely gifted or fussy when it comes food, so perhaps once you get past a certain point the greedier eles just figure "who cares? enough is enough".

    The failure of one tested elephant to worry about the difference between a bowl of 5 oranges and a bowl of 6 oranges notwithstanding it seems worryingly sure that the things are watching and they are counting, maybe not how many sunflower seeds in a handful (though who knows) but certainly how many handfuls and they're remembering. No way I can play favourite if they know I gave someone three handfuls and someone else only two, with humans, of course, I can make excuses for my actions, but with elephants - even if they understand, no-one has yet proven that they'll listen - it will have to be straight down the line equal treatment.

    Sorry Lynch, no more favours!

Is webcam wilderness still wild? (or is freedom just another word for nothing left to lose?)

2009-12-04T01:00:00Z

    Many years ago, in a land far, far away I was once, believe it or not, an English child and I still have vague memories of Sunday T.V. watching (in Black and White but more by license choice than necessity - I'm not that old), Rugby Special or Ski Sunday and then usually a programme with Dr David Attenborough somewhere exotic reporting on the natural order of things - the slow and the sleepy, eaten by the quick and the ferocious, the big and the close knit surviving through knowledge and memory - things lived and things died, it was (and is) tough out there: a dead young deer was the meal for the predator's cubs, a matriarch elephant, with a long life under her belt, died and made way for others, after a period where the herd hung around, the scavengers moved in and squabbled over the carcass.

    Red in tooth and claw as Lord Tennyson would have it, though, admittedly, in these Sunday night struggles, after the proscribed level of struggle the rains always came and life was once more renewed - but wasn't that the point of it all? (that this may no longer be happening is a tale for another time).

    This, and a trip to the zoo to see the slightly fatter, less naturally aware and intense versions of the animals was probably the closest average English folks got to wilderness and we lapped it up - when younger we wondered why the cameraman never stepped in to save the cute little deer, but we grew out of it when we learned that this is the way of things and to interfere on a gut reaction to solve the emotional problem in front of us, as history has told us time and time again, just pushes the negative consequence elsewhere - in the basest view, the predator's cubs die, the scavengers - part of the ecosystem - don't have enough to eat.

    Chaos theory will tell you every action has unseen consequences, I don't know why she swallowed the fly.

    Then slowly, the world got smaller, normal folks like you and I could find ways to go and see these things for real, Dr. Attenborough had to turn to expensive time lapse photography and widgetty cameras to stay ahead of the game and continue to amaze us while those that followed in his footsteps resorted to tabloid wildlife journalism with titles not out of place in a primary school yard argument, "WORLD'S DEADLIEST ANIMAL ENCOUNTERS", "Who Would Win in a Fight Between...." and, worse still in my book, if you weren't actually handling the creature you'd come to see or disturbing it in some way, then it just wasn't a bankable programme.

    The great wide open spaces, the endless jungles in which these dramas were once played out disappeared or, at best, shrank; human populations increased and cheap flights allowed normal folks like us to go and watch the drama for themselves - being humans we started to interfere, be it for our own progress (territories were split by roads, dams were built for power and irrigation) or for tourists (when droughts came naturally Park management pumped water to 'save the animals' largely at the request of their guests (but with half an eye on their budget); in a case recently a critically endangered Siamese crocodile was moved from a camp ground here in Thailand because it was scaring guests - not one word of dissent) somewhere along the way some folks changed the focus of the idea of National Parks - from preserved wilderness ecosystems in all their sweating, flying, biting, stinking, glorious ugliness flecked with seconds of beauty and views of the sublime to playgrounds to come and 'see what we saw on TV' (TV never expressly told you that their programmes were the result of years of mosquito bitten camouflaged camera work), naturally the focus falls on the charismatic megafauna and not on the mosquitoes, worms, ticks and leeches, in fact, say the visitors, if you can give us the charisma without the irritation we'd be a whole lot happier.

    So the temptation arrives to manage the wilderness, if people come to see elephants, we'll manage the area to show them elephants even if it is to the detriment - particularly with elephants - of pretty much all else in the eco-system, especially when you start to help them out, pumping in water in times of drought, growing fruit trees in the jungle - mostly done in Thailand in attempts to stop them coming crop raiding but also done in other countries in response to visitors' cries of 'how can you let them suffer' during the hard times.

    Is suffering to be regretted? I guess it must be, but it is also part of the natural order.

    Pumping water during a drought and negating the effects of other natural disasters that would regulate a population means they then fail to do so, in building a dam and knocking out the dry season delayed pregnancies are no longer delayed and the populations increase.

    Errrrm... hooray!?

    Well, yes, if you happen to be an elephant or a person who has come all this way to see elephants, and well, no if you happen to be a herbivore now in competition with the big guzzling things, or an ant that feeds on a particular sort of tree that is now driven to destruction by the increased ele population. An overpopulation of the charismatic mega fauna begins to develop inside the protected areas to match the overpopulation of humans outside....

    ...and then come the webcams, people love our animals and our park, let's pop a webcam so our fans can see what goes on in our wilderness environment - but the honest piece of naivety we show when we invite the globe into our homes via their desktop is that nowadays everyone is conservationally aware and educated and, well, it seems, everyone ain't.

    Apparently outrage was caused the other week when a park management somewhere in Africa failed to interfere with nature for the sake of just one beast, spotted in assumed pain on a webcam - though those that caused the outrage got their diagnosis wrong, the animal was not in pain through giving birth in her old age but through constipation bought about by not being able to properly chew food, eventually the animal died having successfully deposited her juvenile calf with the herd.

    Somewhere the line has been smudged between domestic animals, who we, having caused them to be born domesticated have duty to make as comfortable as possible (within the bounds of their species) and wild ecosystems which should be protected as a whole not just for the benefit of one species, let alone one beast.

    There are a great many advantages in being born free but the drawback is that you are part of an immense and complicated system that is not skewed in your favour - to me that the phrase "Elephant Dies of Old Age" makes a headline says it all.
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Elephant dies of old age (South Africa)

News 24

October 5, 2009

Cape Town - The elephant cow that provoked an outcry from an animal rights group when it was spotted, apparently distressed and in pain, on an Mpumalanga game reserve's live webcam a fortnight ago, has died.

"The elephant cow died yesterday [Sunday] afternoon of natural causes, i.e. old age," Djuma Private Game Reserve owner Jurie Moolman told Sapa in an e-mail on Monday.

The cow, which last week managed to rejoin its herd, had been at the end of its natural life, with her last set of teeth worn to the point of not being able to chew her food.

Looking out for her calf

"She kept up with the herd, and it is difficult not to think that she had one last thing to do before she died - ensuring that her calf was accepted into the herd. Her calf is with the herd and seems to be doing well.

"Hopefully this is a lesson to us all about interfering; we should not, unless humans caused the suffering," Moolman said.

Djuma is one of more than a dozen lodges and reserves that make up the 65 000 hectare Sabi Sand Reserve, which shares an unfenced 50km border with the Kruger National Park.

On Monday last week, the group Animal Rights Africa demanded that the reserve's owners help the elephant.

According to the group, the elephant was suffering with what appeared to be birth complications.

The Sabi Sand Reserve has a "policy of non-intervention when it comes to animals in distress not caused by humans", but its ecological committee decided to take action in this case.

Could not chew food

When the animal was found by rangers, it was seen to be suffering from old age and constipation.

"It was determined that she is very old - so old that her teeth are too worn for her to masticate her food properly, and thus a bolus of unchewed food is blocking her alimentary canal," Moolman said at the time.

At one point there were plans to euthanise the elephant, but it was granted a reprieve when it rejoined its herd. It was closely monitored over the past week.

The cow - which has a three-year-old calf - was estimated to be between 50 and 60 years of age, an advanced age for an elephant.

Moolman reported the calf was no longer suckling and should have no problems surviving without its mother.
African elephants, the world's largest land mammals, die more often of starvation than old age.

They go through five sets of teeth in their lives, but once these are gone - worn away by the up to 250kg of bark, leaves and twigs an adult elephant chews its way through in a day - they are no longer able to eat.

G'day Mate (an Aussie V.C.R. date)

2009-12-03T08:39:00Z

...before she appealed to us to come and live here Pumpui's Mum, K. Varunee, was part of the one of the extended families whose elephants were chosen to go to Taronga Zoo in Sydney, being the most photogenic she was chosen to take part in a story culminating in the birth of Luk Chai - the first ele to be born in Sydney from Artificial Insemination.

We didn't know where she'd gone until one of the keepers called to say they'd seen her rock up in Sydney.

The T.V. show is airing in the city on Saturday, so, for fans of K. Varunee, K. Pom and Tony, Pumpui & Chok (all of whom stayed behind when she took to the big city) don't forget to grab a stubby, pop a shrimp on the barbie, slip off your thongs, slap a Pom and root for (erm... no, sorry, that's English, I mean support) K. Varunee...
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Getting ready for a special zoo TV event this Sunday, 6.30pm on Channel 7
Australia's biggest baby is growing up fast. This Sunday night at 6.30pm, a one-hour television special tracks the incredible full story of the journey that delivered Australia's first elephant calf, Luk Chai, at Taronga Zoo.

Sunday 6 December
Channel 7
6.30pm

See a preview (including Varunee) here

...because 40 years just fly by. (June and Garry's vow renewal in camp)

2009-11-28T00:30:00Z

    It is well known that we need no real excuse for a party here in the Elephant Camp but occasionally some folks come along with the perfect excuse nonetheless.

    So it is with many times repeat guest June 'the rain Queen' Billings - so called because she has the uncanny knack of bringing rain from the bluest skies and the driest of dry seasons (we're thinking of sending her to Desert Islands or the new Anantara up there in the empty quarter just to give her a real challenge) - she is, of course, also part parent of Tawan, the little big fella that we bought out of hospital in Surin in the days before we learned that buying elephants only put other elephants in danger (in fact, it is his ex-owner that taught us this, converting the money we give him plus some insurance into two new baby elephants for the streets), elephant polo lines-lady and holder of other accolades too numerous to mention here.

    Having been married to Garry 'the sun king' Billings for forty years and accompanied by him on several of her elephant expeditions June contacted us some time ago to request a surprise party to celebrate this and we thought, where better than the elephant camp? We're not very good at keeping secrets but, well, we'll try.

    The morning started with a seven monk and food offering blessing with all the Anantara department heads...

...followed by a little rest to absorb the merit and put the eles to bed before things really got started in the evening, we invited a local village Brahman in to give a baisri (บายศรี) ceremony (which, unfortunately I failed to get photos of) and then let the mahouts, hotel staff and children enjoy a good, old fashioned, elephant camp party...

...food was moo katar buffet, a kind of Northern Thai Korean barbeque thing, cooked over hot coals...

...we pulled up the rugs (well the new 'hybrid' silks - traditional Surin design with more modern plain scarves - sorry, little advert for the ladies' business)...

...as ever in the ele camp the kids are invited too...

...OK, OK, not so old fashioned, the old songs now come through the computer, complete with word prompts karaoke style, 21st century mahouts...

...kom loys (โคมลอย) to bring 40 more years of good luck...

...then let the dancing begin...

...into the night...

...as it was such a special occasion and the Billings' had treated us to this party, we flew in a Swiss T.V. Superstar and anchor lady just for one song.

มงกุฎแสงจันทร์ (high drama on ele back - try typing that into TIVO)

2009-11-13T00:47:00Z

    Residents of Thailand will know of the joys of Thai terrestrial TV, sitting P'Dai's noodle shop over a spicy ma-ma heang and a cold kwat of Leo of an evening you can watch the news followed by a programme that will update you on the deeds of the Royal Family during the day - there's often an elephant either in the news (something tragic that may have happened) or in the Royal news (if one of their Royal Highnesses visited one of their elephant Foundations).

    After that and a small, often humorous - though nowadays more about convincing Thai ladies that they are ugly with their olive skin and dark, smooth hair - advert break you settle in, a long (long - seriously long) theme tune (which usually gives the game away for the next fifteen weeks of story) and then two hours of high drama - clean cut heroes; bad guys with mustaches, long hair and comedically stupid henchmen; gentle elderly patriarchs; scheming matriarchs; a whiter than white, usually rich but pretending to be poor heroine (who always starts off hating the clean cut hero but ends up rather differently), who sometimes carries a very big gun and knows some form of karate, never sweats and wears full make-up even when sleeping rough in the jungle; a scheming older sister/evil friend; a comedy maid or gardener (always played by the same actor who must be legally obliged to be cast in all Thai made TV and movies) who speaks best fluent Lao in a Bangkok accent and to top it all there is quite often some time travel thrown in.

    Thai drama at its best, all acted as though for a stage audience and in crystal clear Bangkok Thai. It is not necessarily the best pointer for a young foreigner trying to find his way in the country (argue with the best looking girl until she falls in love with you, avoid men with moustaches, always listen to the old guy and don't follow the old lady - unless she's poor, or at least pretending to be) but it is a good way to practice the sort of Thai to use when you have to go for meetings in Bangkok.

    ...and what more reason do you need to sit down and watch? Either on television for those of you who live here or they even stream it through the internet nowadays for those of you not-so-lucky.

    Well, here's one more reason, last year, before the flood, we were approached by a production company needing elephants, long sticks and a bit expertise to film one such drama - set in a foreign land, sometime in the past, where elephant polo is played by princely folk.

...lights, camera...

...someone famous throughout Thailand and an actor...

...the elephants appear to be enjoying the action, the mahouts are wondering if this acting lark is all it is cracked up to be...

...and even more action.

    Oh, almost forgot, the point of the piece, the show in question มงกุฎแสงจันทร์ (Mongkut Saengjan) begins airing today on Thai TV Channel three at the drama time of 20:30 - the official page (including a trailer - with a trunk! - and some fan cards to send to friends) is available here.

You give what? to who? for why? (or why we support the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre).

2009-11-11T00:57:00Z

    One of the questions that I am most frequently asked, a question that has me scratching my head, is "You do a great job here, does the Government give you any funding?". I cough a little and furrow my brow, say thanks for the compliment but never really understand why the Government would fund a private enterprise, or even a Thai registered foundation - yes, our goals may be broadly similar but I've never heard of Governments financially supporting N.G.O's.

    In fact, in our case, through the King's Cup Elephant Polo tournament held each year, it is often the other way around - but when I say as much it is the turn of my friendly guest or journalist to furrow their brow and ask why a struggling little enterprise which (by the dirt 'neath my nails and the holes in my jeans) is obviously working from month to month just to keep our eles and mahouts in the style to which they've become accustomed. Why would we be giving that hard earned cash (& don't believe anyone who tells you that just because most of the money is donated in a charity auction it is not hard earned, not only is a charitable auction incredibly hard to organise, it is not unfair to say that to get those donors into that position takes the entire management staff of the hotel plus a few die-hard outside supporters three to six month's dedicated work along with the investment of millions of baht - not to mention the organisation of twenty elephants off the streets and just a little sweat from my aging limbs) to a Government institution?

    Well, the initial answer to that is easy, it is our stated intention to help all the elephants in Thailand and we believe that, as well as looking after our few in such a way as to set up a blue-print that can be copied elsewhere, the Government, in particular the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre (in the North) are in an incredible position to do that.

    But then people go and visit, scratch the surface a little bit, slide between the gates and go to Lampang and what do they find? Well, on initial inspection, they see a largely commercial operation with an entrance fee, an elephant show, everything for sale all the time - it looks just like all the other elephant camps in Thailand, they're all businesses, why would this be any different?

    Well, two reasons...

    The first will be familiar, in a way far deeper than we have ever tried here, the T.E.C.C. have recognised that Thai elephants, if they are to survive in domesticity will have to make money in order to keep themselves fed and have dedicated themselves to finding safe, sustainable ways of doing this that will appeal to all markets; remember all the alternatives to 'elephant trekking' you've heard about from camps with different P.R. approaches or seen on the internet? You can probably bet they originated at the T.E.C.C. - our very own mahout training course started with them, the first folks to do it; elephant dung paper? yep, first in the world; elephant painting? years before that video went viral you could buy conceptual art from the budding pachyderm Piccassos of Lampang; elephant orchestra? well, not many people doing that yet but still they've featured on some high powered movie scores and have three CD's under their belt - just about any idea you can think of that is now seen with a 'wow' on the internet or a blog, if it safe for elephants and can earn a mahout (or a business) extra money giving the ele an extra hour off, it was probably pioneered and trialled at the T.E.C.C. It may have been tuned and tweaked elsewhere but the idea was probably from there.

    The second reason, the stuff you don't see - the hospital is pretty visible and gives free care to any Thai elephant but you don't see the research that goes on; the mobile veterinary clinic that will come to any elephant that is not in need of hospital treatment but still needs a vet; you don't see the musth control team that can come out at the drop of a hat, free of charge, highly trained, highly skilled crack mahouts who'll come and sedate your out of control musth bull (eh Phu Khi!) who would, in previous years, been in danger not only of hurting folks but of catching a bullet rather than a dart of sedative; it is possible to miss the Elephant and Mahout Training college which researches and offers new elephant training methods away from the brutal ones practiced in the old days, teaches new mahouts and old hands new ways of looking after the elephants; unless you sweep the internet you don't get to see the publications in Thai and in English that come out of the T.E.C.C's typewriters on elephant care, history and everything in between and finally (but not comprehensively, these are just the things I can think of from the top of my head and there's plenty that I don't know about), the thing that gave us the idea to come down here and write this blog, the Pang La Sanctuary for disabled, elderly and dangerous elephants - operating quietly for over 30 years now without an official opening or any way of turning a dime.

    All of this extra stuff costs money over and above keeping and feeding the eighty odd elephants under their care and this is why, when the management system have a project that needs supporting - we're currently working with their Thai Elephant Therapy Project to train already domesticated Thai elephants (preferably ex-street eles) to work with Autistic children they can come to us and to the King's Cup Elephant Polo with a proposal for equipment or for specific funding and, if we can see it will be good for all Thai eles in the long run, there's a good chance we'll put our noses to the grindstone and try to raise some cash, and over the years, with the help of our sponsors, we haven't done badly...

...over the last few weeks we've had reason to visit a few times and a few facilities, so I thought I'd take a few photos of the more visible things the King's Cup has given in order to help this work.

Mahout housing at the hospital, so not only can elephants come and get free care, the mahouts can now stay with their eles.

...a few years ago we scraped together enough shekels for three pick-ups, now seen moving staff and fodder between the Lampang sites...

...the dedicated elephant ambulance travels all over the country to help sick elephants come to the centre and can also double as purely a well designed elephant transport truck.

...and with the money from the 2009 tournament we've agreed to help the Thai Elephant Therapy Project, five elephants have been off the streets and under training at the T.E.C.C. for three months already, the research is due to begin in earnest next March.

Electric Eleland (are you experienced?)

2009-10-31T00:38:00Z

    It is a peculiarity of life, I've found, that no matter when you start a project - if it is a project worth starting - it will be finished at exactly the moment that you no longer need to use it: the baby elephant camp was finished at the beginning of last dry season, the office roof was finally fixed on the day the rains stopped, the solar showers for the mahouts were finally installed just as the idea of hot water made everyone sweatier and smellier, I have no doubts that my elephant dung solid fuel machines will finally see the light of day at about the same time this year - but that's the wonderful thing about being weather obsessed, seasons always, always, always come around again (well, they used to anyway).

    So it is with the much touted electric fence for our babies, the Mark III is ready to be launched on an unsuspecting ele public at just the time the fish are gasping for air and finding ready friends in the egrets' beaks down on the grassland.

    Luckily we always have half an eye on the bigger picture, the Mark III in this case, was never really designed just for our little valley - yes it will give a few eles a chance to run around, cause chaos and create unwanted wallows when our grassland floods again, as it surely will; but the plan has always been to finalise a design on this relatively small scale that could be extended around a larger plot of land, wherever, whenever, whoever this becomes possible.

    As with all these things, the electric fence idea is, of course, not ours but the designs we borrowed from downloaded internet photos, mobile phone sneaky spy shots and our visit to Her Majesty's Royal Re-introduction Project didn't seem to fit our rambunctious but obviously fairly tame young 'uns - so Mark's I & II fell by the wayside in a pile of not even barely worried buffalo (signal too weak - wire too thick) and St Vitus' dancing mahouts (hmmm.... bit too strong that one - you didn't think we'd actually test it on eles did you?).

    Once we had the jolt level to our satisfaction Lynchee and I went in, I with bated breath - how would she react? would the first jolt send her panicking through the fence the other side? would she hate me forever? - she with glorious ignorance - mmmm... green grass to eat; tyres, people to play with.

    Unfortunately I was actually so concerned (once more my scientific credentials go flying out the window) that I needed to be there to help her cope with the consequences of the first shock that I don't have a video or photo of the momentous occasion when she backed up a couple of inches, made no noise at all and came to the conclusion not to touch the blue rope again before going on with the grazing and the playing. In short the electric fence worked just as it should - other eles were not quite so quick to realise (but then I'm biased as to the brightness of our Lynch') but they got it in the end.

...after a quick (but largely unnecessary) verbal lesson in how to use it...

...it is down to some serious playing.

    The trick now will be persuading the mahouts to let their eles use it, unlike classic cattle and horse herding countries the electric fence is not a common method of stock control here in Thailand and we do make a point of listening to our mahouts' concerns - they started with 'the elephant will surely die it is lethal, you're completely crazy' which is an easy one to disprove having built and demonstrated the thing whilst maintaining a couple of very much alive eles - now we're on a slightly trickier belief that their babies will be sent sterile.

    Hey, ho, another day, another challenge in our mahout friendly, rescue rental world.

    But we have a long time to win them around because, as alluded to at the very beginning of the missive, the project is finished just at the time we don't really need it - the grassland's dry and the babies are daily out running around in the tall grass with perhaps, just perhaps, a little splashing thrown in.

Lazy review of Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers (using selected evidence from the book to back up my traditional rants)

2009-10-25T00:13:00Z

    One of the problems of the blogosphere is that one can select and publish only the information that agrees with our world view, the medium removes the burden of proof, I could put up the most preposterous of opinions, presenting them as facts and, though they may be based on the scantest of evidence, you Dear Reader, would have no recourse save for an acerbic comment which I could then choose whether or not to send public.

    So, being prone to this sort of behaviour myself, it is a great relief when some clever and rigorous folks - otherwise known as scientists - go to the trouble of producing a work that appears to back up the more spurious of the rants I subject you to.

    The chapter on water usage had me almost punching the air with joy, apart from the fact it was lucid, well written and researched, it could have been lifted from one of my pieces (though as the book was finished in 2003 or so and I have only just read it now we must have just come to the same conclusion). That the yearly claims of drought have more to do with an increasing population and an increased expectation of year round cropping (using irrigation during the dry season) throughout the area (the book makes distinction between upland farmers who normally take the blame and lowland farmers who are the traditional blamers - not being tuned into the narratives I have never made that distinction) without a corresponding increase in water collection infrastructure.

    The rainfall graphs taken from the Royal Irrigation Department website manage to show that rainfall levels, though definitely fluctuating over the last 40 years, are (so far) fluctuating within natural, historical levels in much the same way as my favourite graph of flood and flow from the Mekong River Commission has (thus far) managed to show that even our great flood events and drought claims are well within the natural fluctuations of recent history and have more to do with an increased expectation to be able to farm/trade year round - something never dreamt of in the past.

    But enough of the agreements and the 'I told you so's' what did I learn? Well, in truth I learned a lot about the historical politics that have informed traditional Government intervention in this landscape - I had never assumed the monocrop large teak plantations were anything more than long term cash cropping though they were, apparently, an attempt to preserve rainfall levels under the belief that trees create rain; learned a great deal of the issues between lowland and upland farmers and became enlightened as to the land designations and, in particular, the intricacies of running elephants on certain types of land, if you like, the official definition of conservation.

    I was also quite disturbed to learn that perhaps the most accurate method of estimating historical erosion patterns is to calculate the relative levels of cesium-137 left over from the atomic bomb testing age (peaking in 1963) in the soil.  This is radioactive stuff dropped from the atmosphere uniformly across the world in those days.

    The only chapter on which I would take issue, and in relying on observational and anecdotal evidence to do so I become that which I seek to criticise, is the chapter on biodiversity. In doing so I make no distinction between upland and lowland farmers and between the methods traditionally used by different peoples, I buy into the arguments that certain sorts of swidden agriculture - both pioneer and otherwise (though, being a fan of big trees and of natural environments, I don't really like the idea of pioneer swidden - i.e. moving a village and cutting down virgin forest in order grow crops rather than having rotating areas of secondary forest left fallow for a certain number of years around a fixed village - though what is done is done and, what the book doesn't mention is that most of the big trees were presumably (up until Government intervention put a stop to it in 1989) taken by large logging companies and our favourite mammals which, I presume, would have produced a far greater effect on the virgin forest than any amount of either type of swidden).

    This chapter seeks, I feel, to suggest that large populations and commercial, year round, farming - be it of fruit, rubber or other trees, may not harm the biodiversity of the region - having walked in areas ranging from protected National Park (mainly areas of tertiary growth) where hunting and grazing are controlled, through secondary growth forest away from villages, swidden farming areas and into pesticide ridden fruit farms and 'intensive' agricultural areas I can vouch, observationally, that the diversity of mammal life (with wild mammals being virtually without trace outside specifically (and actually) protected areas) and of bird life (from calls and observation) decreases as you walk through - with the large, fruit and rubber forests, being void of any faunal life at all.

    For floral life you would have to ask a horticulturalist, but the (seemingly universal) habit of using pesticide to clear weeds around any plantation or area that needs cleaning cannot be good for plant diversity - in fairness the book only specifically challenges the oft made claim that pesticide use pollutes downstream waterways and, for this, I have to bow to higher knowledge - but it ain't that good for the plants it falls on, whether those plants be in the mountains or on the plains.

    In summation, this is not a book you would necessarily read unless you were specifically interested in the subject, either here or elsewhere in S.E. Asia - it may hold many lessons for those working in countries where the economic miracle of Thailand has not yet happened and, at times, it does read more of a direct questioning of Government policy and a defence of the upland 'hill tribe' farmers and farming techniques than a truly balanced scientific laying out of all research in the field.

    That said, the historical tendency to blame all of the agricultural and environmental ills on specific groups of upland farmers, whilst praising other groups and completely ignoring the effects of others still - when all are operating, increasingly, in the same area must be very frustrating for those who take all the blame and those who have researched to prove that this 100% share is unwarranted.

    As with so much else in life, for those of you who prefer your reading slightly less scientifically rigorous the situation can be summed up as "it's not as simple as it looks and don't believe everything you read in the papers (or the blogosphere)".

    Bit like elephants really.
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    Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers (the politics of environmental knowledge in Northern Thailand)
by Tim Forsyth and Andrew Walker is available from all good local bookstores as well as international websites.

What's big and grey and has a long nose?

2009-10-10T01:02:00Z

    Any guesses? No, no, no, not that, would I insult your intelligence by not posing a trick question?

    Hint: It doesn't really have a long nose (apart from allegedly providing room for those that are inclined to develop one a la Pinocchio, but that is, quite literally, a stretch).

    No, it is the area in which the current wildlife laws and CITES regulations allow us to register our elephants in order to earn the moniker 'Captive Bred'. In fact, that's not quite true, the CITES regulation (10.16 rev.) is very clear, for an elephant to be defined as captive bred (C) both her parents must be classified at least F1 - i.e. have been bred in captivity in a controlled manner. What is unsaid is all four of the grandparent parents, presumably, could have been wild caught - something that makes sense as, given the life span and reproductive tendencies of an elephant we would have to be going back 24 years at the very minimum for those four grandparent elephants, to have been caught - yes, it would have been illegal to have caught them in 1985 but if we were to suggest that grandparents and then parents were 30 years old when they bred we are well back into the times when wild capture was not only legal but commonplace.

    Even in 1985, however, the world was a very different place, Thailand was a very, very different place, the laws for elephant registration are as old as the hills and, indeed, take into account that Thailand - particularly those bits in which elephants hang out - is a particularly hilly (or swampy if we talk of Surin) place.

    Once a baby is born you have eight years to register it, by which time it will have been separated from it's mother for five years and, as with wild elephants, the father has but one job, usually accomplished with relish and gusto, and he's out of the picture - one act of penetration performed nearly 10 years before the latest legal registration date of his calf, following which he may not have been seen again. So, on a village scale, we have the mahout's and perhaps the village elder's word that the elephant came from two specific parent elephants (who may no longer be in the area) - scientifically this isn't of much use as, outside the big logging companies, formal records were not taken and the registration system has no legal requirement to mention the parents of an elephant and place of breeding (i.e. to confirm it was a controlled environment).

    I think I have mentioned this before, when we began registering our elephants with an international database, the collator automatically recorded them as wild caught (turns out a lot of people outside Thailand seem to think that we just pop into the jungle and grab an ele every time we need one - partially, one suspects, because of this grey area in scientific designation and near impossibility of registering any of our elephants as Captive Bred under the CITES definition.) but what got me reading deeper was a recently published report by the international agency Traffic entitled The Elephant and Ivory Trade in Thailand which appears to be a well researched (except some data is out of date - number of domestic elephant camps stemming from 2002, price of baby elephants must be from about the same time) document focusing mainly on the ivory trade but obviously spending time at the border and making use of the research from an earlier study focusing on Myanmar that we have previously discussed.

    Interestingly the first study (and I consider both of them valid) resulted in vibrant headlines in the popular press identifying Myanmar as the centre of the illegal trade in wildlife in South East Asia, whereas this study, some of the same journals and journalists now identify Thailand as the centre of that trade with headlines such as Thai Corruption, Loopholes, & Adventure Travel Enable Illegal Ivory Trade - lucky Burma to be off the hook so quickly. The reality of the situation is, of course, that it is a cross border trade (at least for live eles) and that until both countries live up to their obligations under CITES (Thailand signed in 1983, Myanmar in 1997) then the trade will continue - though, as I have said before, the trade is older than the effective enforcement of the borders so the elephant keepers living on both sides of the border can be understood when they fail to see what the fuss is about.

    That Adventure Travel either deliberately (though I would be tempted to place that burden on the less adventurous tourism ventures) or unwittingly (through my old favourite soap box subject of the 'smuggle to Bangkok to sell to well meaning 'rescue' operations' trade) drives the trade in live elephants is something that it is not beyond imagination, I do find it slightly unfair to blame us for the trade in ivory though: I don't think any camp I've ever visited sells ivory (at least openly and to the public) - if anyone has seen it for sale in a camp I would like to know, Traffic's under cover folks may know more.

    In fairness to Thailand the report made several recommendations and those that can be practically and easily followed have been; leading to some high profile ivory seizures, increased training of border post officials and customs folks etc. I think it is also fair to say that the tourist industry is aware of the problems and, as ever, change can be market driven; as tourists I highly recommend that you ask the camp you choose to travel to (or ask your agent to ask) how they source their elephants and what they do to safeguard against using illegally smuggled, wild caught, elephants.

    Other recommendations such as the legal registration and microchipping of baby elephants at birth (or let's say within three months) and a national computer database have not yet been implemented but are worth campaigning for as it is very difficult to see any legal arguments for not doing this given Thailand's excellent infrastructure and communications system - let us hope for a change in the law in the near future.
________________________________

Thailand steps up efforts to tackle illegal ivory trade

TRAFFIC press release

September 24, 2009

Bangkok, Thailand, 24 September—A recent high-profile ivory seizure, a review of national legislation, and the initiation of training courses for both government staff and ivory traders are indications of the commitment being shown by the Thai Government to tackle the illegal ivory trade, according to TRAFFIC.

The seizure, by the Royal Thai Customs Department, took place during the third week of August at the Suvarnabhumi International Airport, when, according to the Thailand CITES Management Authority, 316 pieces of raw ivory weighing 812.5 kg illegally imported from Qatar were confiscated.

In order to help track the domestic ivory trade in Thailand, in August last year the Government introduced legislation requiring ivory traders to maintain and updated inventory their stock and to have this available for review by authorities as required.

The Government is also beginning a review of the Wildlife Animal Reservation and Protection Act (WARPA 1992). The Act contains a loophole that allows illegal trade to flourish in the country.

The flaw in the legislation was highlighted in TRAFFIC’s recent report, The elephant and ivory trade in Thailand (PDF, 800 K which also detailed the results of market surveys for ivory carried out in 2006 and 2007: http://www.traffic.org/species-reports/traffic_species_mammals50.pdf

“The government of Thailand is clearly demonstrating its commitment to addressing the illegal trade in ivory, although there is a long way to go before satisfactory measures are in place,” says Chris RShepherd, Acting Director of TRAFFIC Southeast Asia.

Recently the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) initiated a series of training courses to raise awareness among its staff about Thailand’s obligations under existing national legislation and under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) to control and manage ivory trade.

Thailand became a Party to CITES in 1983.

The first course was organized in Nakorn Sawan Province, and to help ensure buy-in from the private 
sector, ivory traders were invited to participate. TRAFFIC was invited to run a session on the identification of ivory for DNP staff.

“It was very encouraging to see the enthusiasm of the participants, and to see that more than 80% of the ivory and substitute ivory products used to test DNP staff were identified correctly,” says Shepherd.

The second course in Sara Buri Province was a three day event aimed at raising awareness among enforcement agencies about Thailand’s obligations under CITES and the importance of developing an effective coordination mechanism to report ivory seizures. A session was also included to help enforcement officers distinguish between real and fake ivory (usually bone and plastic resins) and between elephant (CITES listed) and mammoth ivory (non CITES listed).

TRAFFIC, in collaboration with the CITES Secretariat, has developed the Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS), a database that collates information on all ivory seizures reported worldwide.

Analysis of ETIS records helps in the assessment of how elephant range States are fulfilling theircommitment under the Convention, and has consistently identified Thailand as one of the top five countries implicated in the illegal trade of ivory.

Among countries in the region, Thailand plays the most significant role in the illegal trade in ivory and other elephant products, with trade in live elephants also a serious issue.

Although the trade in ivory and elephant products is not a new phenomenon—in Thailand, records go back as far the Sukhothai period (1238-1376 A.D.) — Asian Elephants are declining across their range, 
with the illegal trade in ivory a major contributing factor.

TRAFFIC has offered to provide technical support to help Thailand fulfill its obligations under CITES, ETIS and in the enforcement of strengthened national legislation.

Thailand is one of the 175 Parties expected to attend the next full meeting of CITES, which takes place next March in Qatar where concern about the trade in ivory and other elephant products will once again feature on the agenda.

“The seizure by Thai Customs of more than 800 kg of ivory illegally imported from Qatar last month could hardly be of greater significance for Thailand to signal its international commitment to implementing the treaty fully,” says Shepherd.