Thailand’s tourism elephants lose when pragmatism gives way to politics, ideology

The best hope for Thail­and’s unem­ployed tour­ism ele­phants now are livestreams and the gen­er­os­ity of donors. As travel resumes, ele­phant expert John Roberts fears that loc­al polit­ics and act­iv­ist ideo­logy will con­tin­ue to be a bar­ri­er to optim­al outcomes. 

It’s a “Good Tour­ism” Insight. 

It is always fool­ish to gaze into a crys­tal ball and try to pre­dict what will hap­pen in the future but that was exactly what I attemp­ted back in 2017 when I penned “Ele­phant tour­ism: The harms of received wis­dom”. I ima­gined what would hap­pen to Thailand’s cap­tive ele­phants if con­scien­tious trav­el­lers boy­cot­ted their venues. 

Thanks to COVID-19 we have had a chance to see what hap­pens to cap­tive ele­phants when inter­na­tion­al tour­ism grinds to a halt. At writ­ing, inter­na­tion­al tour­ism has dis­ap­peared from Thai­l­and for some 14 months. It is worth look­ing closely at the cur­rent situ­ation because even though inter­na­tion­al tour­ism will surely resume, it will be a very long time, if ever, until it looks like it did before the pandemic. 

Also see Hol­lis Burb­ank-Ham­marlun­d’s news art­icle from May 2020
“Veter­in­ari­ans seek emer­gency funds for unem­ployed elephants”

‘If ever’ because act­iv­ist pres­sure in some source mar­kets is mount­ing. For example, the Asso­ci­ation of Brit­ish Travel Agents has, since the onset of COVID-19, released guidelines sug­gest­ing that all ele­phant activ­it­ies must take place with a bar­ri­er between ele­phant and tour­ist. Fur­ther­more, the UK Gov­ern­ment is said to be con­sid­er­ing a new law which some act­iv­ists hope will make it illeg­al for Brit­ish travel agents to advert­ise (and sell?) ele­phant activ­it­ies. (One hopes that the UK Par­lia­ment will take a con­sultat­ive, sci­ence- and com­munity-based approach, and that any new law will tar­get improve­ments rather than harm­ful, emo­tion-fuelled boycotts.)

Zero inbound tourism hurts Thailand’s elephants

So what is the situ­ation in 2021? Are cap­tive ele­phants bet­ter or worse off after 14 months without any inter­na­tion­al tourism? 

‘Worse off’ is the unan­im­ous reply from people on the ground, including:

• Camps with inter­na­tion­al man­age­ment who are run­ning ever-more-des­per­ate online fun­drais­ing programmes; 
• Gov­ern­ment and donor-fun­ded vets who are hav­ing to treat more and more ele­phants with gastrointest­in­al prob­lems and malnutrition; 
• Cam­paigns that help ele­phants not rep­res­en­ted inter­na­tion­ally, such as the Thai Ele­phant Alli­ance and the South­ern Thai Ele­phant Found­a­tion;
• Mahouts and own­ers who have had to return home, take second jobs to feed their ele­phants, open You­Tube or Face­book chan­nels to beg for food or, in very rare cases, aban­don their ele­phants to almost starve;

Also see Hol­lis Burb­ank-Ham­marlun­d’s “GT” Insight
“Tour­ism in crisis: A Myan­mar ele­phant camp pivots to plan B”

Fur­ther­more, the vil­lage of Ban Ta Klang in the north­east­ern province of Sur­in, which was already strug­gling to feed 300 ele­phants pre-pan­dem­ic, has received 300 more indi­vidu­als to take care of as ele­phant camps in tour­ist areas have shuttered. 

In the moun­tain­ous north, ele­phants have been kicked out of camps and returned to com­munity forests that are much dimin­ished by the recent arrival of indus­tri­al agri­cul­ture. An incid­ent in the early wet sea­son (April) saw three ele­phants killed and three oth­ers injured by a single fall­ing tree.

Political resistance to pragmatic change hurts Thailand’s elephant

Has a loss of tour­ism income forced a re-think by Thailand’s ele­phant people? Is the Gov­ern­ment con­sid­er­ing a policy to reduce the num­ber of cap­tive elephants? 

The answers, so far, are ‘no’ and ‘no’.

Ele­phants are still being bred in cap­tiv­ity “for future mahouts”, one mahout I spoke to said. People are still buy­ing and selling ele­phants albeit at a ‘reduced’ price of around USD 20,000 per ele­phant rather than the pre-pan­dem­ic price of USD 60,000. (As recently as 2005, even USD 20,000 would have been con­sidered very expens­ive for an ele­phant. The price was driv­en up by the ‘buy to res­cue’ trend. I believe the price must drop much lower before ele­phants are once again con­sidered for their intrins­ic price­less value.) 

Also see Ana­bel Lopez-Perez’ insight­ful art­icle from Laos
“Mahouts mat­ter: The Ele­phant Con­ser­va­tion Center’s essen­tial workers”

Giv­en that every ele­phant requires at least USD 20 worth of fod­der per day plus a mahout’s liv­ing wage and veter­in­ary care, those invest­ing enough in an ele­phant to buy a second-hand Mer­cedes must assume that the heady boom times will return. 

More wor­ry­ing still is the stiff oppos­i­tion, mainly from own­ers of large ele­phant camps, to an attempt by the Thai Gov­ern­ment to intro­duce very basic man­dat­ory wel­fare stand­ards. One can expect sim­il­ar oppos­i­tion to the draft Ele­phant Act, which would place basic reg­u­la­tions on a cur­rently unreg­u­lated industry, life­style, and tra­di­tion — not all tour­ism-related — includ­ing licens­ing for mahouts, ele­phant camp own­ers, and ele­phant traders. (Suc­cess­ive waves of COVID-19 have stalled pub­lic and industry con­sulta­tion on this draft legislation.)

Entrenched positions hurt Thailand’s elephants

It is clear that cap­tive ele­phants are now caught in a hold­ing pat­tern that is spiralling lower. Des­pite massive online efforts, the money raised to look after them is insuf­fi­cient. This has res­ul­ted in an over­all decline in ele­phants’ health and wel­fare with many, par­tic­u­larly in Sur­in, now on short chains 24 hours a day with no exer­cise or enrichment. 

It is equally clear that the views of both the ele­phant people and those who would seek to blame tour­ism for the ele­phants’ ills remain entrenched. It seems most on both sides are wait­ing for a return to ‘nor­mal’ to either reopen their tour­ism busi­nesses or restart their act­iv­ist fun­drais­ing cam­paigns to con­tin­ue as before. 

This is a shame. While the pan­dem­ic has shown us what ele­phants’ lives without tour­ism look like, before the pan­dem­ic there was cause for optimism. 

Also see Dav­id Gill­banks’ news art­icle from March 2019
“Ele­phants are smart. What if tour­ism jobs were good for them?”

For example, some ele­phant and camp own­ers — more than I expec­ted — had begun to design busi­ness mod­els with act­iv­ists’ con­cerns in mind. How­ever, as peer-reviewed stud­ies were start­ing to show — and as I expec­ted — they did not neces­sar­ily improve ele­phant well-being. Yet the fact is that many ele­phant tour­ism stake­hold­ers demon­strated that they were amen­able to change. I am cer­tain that they could be per­suaded to con­tinu­ally improve their prac­tices with evid­ence-based advice. I’ve spoken with some of them and know vets who are in touch with many more.

Fur­ther­more, before the pan­dem­ic, inde­pend­ent groups had begun audit­ing ele­phant camps of all busi­ness mod­els to inter­na­tion­ally-recog­nised wel­fare stand­ards based on peer-reviewed sci­ence and veter­in­ary exper­i­ence. Audit res­ults when cor­rel­ated with prac­tices gave loc­al vets, Gov­ern­ment depart­ments, and the audit­ing organ­isa­tions them­selves use­ful insights. They were bet­ter able to advise camp own­ers on spe­cif­ic actions they could take to improve the wel­fare of ele­phants under their care.

The way forward

Ulti­mately, if Thai­l­and and the rest of the world want to reduce cap­tive ele­phants’ depend­ence on tour­ism, the only effect­ive way for­ward will be a coher­ent plan to reduce the num­ber of ele­phants in cap­tiv­ity. The plan will require strictly-enforced laws that have the buy-in of the ele­phant community. 

Four­teen months since any ele­phant tour­ism oper­a­tion received, in per­son, an inter­na­tion­al tour­ist, the con­tin­ued res­ist­ance by the industry to any per­ceived Gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence sug­gests that we are a long way from achiev­ing this. It will take more than the pro­longed dis­ap­pear­ance of tour­ists or the ban­ning of advert­ising or sales from one or two inbound markets.

Also see Daniel Turn­er­’s “GT” Insight
“As we build back, is sus­tain­able tour­ism enough to regen­er­ate nature?”

On a more pos­it­ive note, after 14 months of no tour­ism, we can see which oper­a­tions looked after their ele­phants through the tough times. And we can see those that flew flags of com­pas­sion and ‘eth­ics’ dur­ing the good times only to let their ele­phants and mahouts fend for them­selves when the going got rough. 

As inter­na­tion­al tour­ism resumes, per­haps the best way for glob­al travel & tour­ism stake­hold­ers to sup­port Thail­and’s ele­phants is to ask pro­spect­ive part­ners how they helped ele­phants through the pan­dem­ic, and to which inter­na­tion­ally-recog­nised, sci­ence-based wel­fare stand­ards they are inde­pend­ently audited.

Fea­tured image (top of post): Dur­ing COVID lock­downs, fun­drais­ing livestreams are the best hope for unem­ployed ele­phants in Thai­l­and. Pic sup­plied by John Roberts.

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About the author

John Roberts saw his first cap­tive ele­phant, Sham Shere Bahadur, on the lawn of Tiger Tops Jungle Lodge, Nepal, Octo­ber 1, 1999. Des­pite being sur­roun­ded by many fas­cin­at­ing things in Chit­wan Nation­al Park he was quickly fas­cin­ated by ele­phants, not only the creatures them­selves but by the com­plex rela­tion­ships with their mahouts.

Mr Roberts arrived in Thai­l­and in 2003 and set up the award-win­ning Ele­phant Camp for Anantara Golden Tri­angle Ele­phant Camp & Resort, where he con­tin­ues to devel­op guest activ­it­ies that enhance the wel­fare of elephants. 

He also estab­lished the Golden Tri­angle Asi­an Ele­phant Found­a­tion (GTAEF) to ini­tially bring street-beg­ging young ele­phants back to their nat­ur­al hab­it­at. Now, as well as help­ing wild ele­phants stay wild by fund­ing long term hab­it­at con­ser­va­tion pro­jects, GTAEF con­cen­trates on help­ing mahouts and ele­phants adapt to the real­it­ies of mod­ern life in South­east Asia. Its Tar­get Train­ing Pos­it­ive Rein­force­ment Work­shops have reached more than 800 mahouts, vets, and man­agers respons­ible for thou­sands of ele­phants across eight range states. Through part­ner­ships, GTAEF is provid­ing veter­in­ary care for ele­phants across Thai­l­and by sub­sid­ising vet and vet nurse wages. In Ban Ta Klang — South­east Asia’s most pop­u­lous cap­tive ele­phant site and home to the mahout tra­di­tion argu­ably most cut-off from it’s roots — GTAEF provides chil­dren with with full-time Eng­lish-lan­guage train­ing and con­ser­va­tion education.

John is a mem­ber of the IUCN SSC Asi­an Ele­phant Spe­cial­ist Group and co-chair of the Asi­an Cap­tive Ele­phant Work­ing Group. Since the start of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic John, his GTAEF team, and the ele­phants have livestreamed nearly daily via Face­book at GTAEF Help­ing Ele­phants and Ins­tagram at @GTAEF_Thailand.