Asian Elephants endangered, tortured

"From Lonely Planet's Thorntree Forum
Elephant Abuse (Trekking w/ BMP Residence, Chiang Mai)
I have just returned to Canada from a 4 week backpacking trip in Thailand. As with most backpackers who visit Thailand, part of my trip entailed a 3-4 day trek in Chiang Mai through the Doi Inthanon National Park & entailed an elephant trek. I was extremely apprehensive about this portion of our trek, and asked our guide Nikon "Dragon" repeatedly if the elephants were well treated, and he repeatedly tried consoling me by saying that the elephants were in fact well treated.

Upon arriving at the elephant camp, and was immediately overwhelmed by the shere number of elephants (approx. 15 in total). The first thing I saw was a VERY young baby elephant chained by her neck to her mothers neck, with about 6 feet of chain seperating them. I immediately noticed that the mother of the baby had enormous large purple marks on her skull, with a clear wound located in the middle of the purple. This purple mark looked like iodine and it surrounded almost the entire one side of her upper skull. I asked our guide what the purple mark was, and he said it was for insect bites.

We were quickly ushered up on a platform where we were to get on the back of the designated elephant. Our group had a total of 12 people, so we required 6 elephants. Once our procession of elephants began to walk, I was able to turn around and view the other 5 elephants, and noticed that almost every one of the other elephants had the same large purple markings, with what looked like a hole / wound in the middle of the purple. Some elephants had these holes on both sides of their skulls.

Within the first 2 minutes of the trek, the elephants had to make their way down a rather steep decline in the embankment, and understandably the mother with her baby chained to her, was apprehensive of the enbankment....most likely for the safety of her still awkward baby, more so than for herself. All of a sudden I heard banging and turned around the witness the mohout of one of the other elphants violently hitting the apprehensive mother with his pointy hammer like instrument directly on the area where the hole and purple iodine markings were on her skull. I immediately yelled at the top of my lungs for the mohout to stop hitting her, and my co-travellers quickly supported me. The mohout stopped hitting her, but it was a little too late, as we saw puss & blood being dispelled from the already pre-existing wound on the elephants skull. It was now painfully clear what the "insect bites" really were.

Because of our anger at the treatment of the elephant, the mohouts didn't beat the elephants again in our presense. I desperately wanted to get off the elphant, but the mohout insisted that there was no place that I could get off safely, and was therefore forced to continue on one of the single most horrifing experiences of my life. I was so upset, I literally threw up, through my tears. I was forced to continue to watch the baby elephant being forced to climb enbankments that were 4 times her height, while her mother desperately tried to help her up the enbankment. This scene continued for 50 minutes

The grounds and path of the elephant camp was repulsive. The entire grounds and path were covered in several layers of elephant feces, including the part of the grounds were the elephants were to eat. There was a pregnant elephant that was chained to a stump with no more than 4 feet of chain to move, and she was eating a small pile of bamboo sticks that layed upon the feces laiden ground. My heart broke for this gentle giant and the life that her baby was unknowingly about to be born into.

All of the elephants on the camp were chained, and there was one elephant inparticular that looked in dreadful health. This particular elephant had the same purple iodine markings as the others at the camp, but he had the markings over his entire back spine area. Once I was able to get a little closer, I could see that he also had holes from the mohouts hammer instrument covering his entire spine (which was protruding). It was clear to me that this elephant was in very ill health.

Unfortunately I do not know the name of this particular camp, only where it was. I made complaints to our tour guide as well as the owner of the BMP Residence, and pleaded that they demand that the owners of the elephant camp better treat the elephants, or else they will no longer be able to bring tourists to their camp because they have received numerous comlaints from travellers. The owner of the BMP Residence said he had a meeting with the owner of the camp the following week and said he would bring up my concerns at that time. My gut feeling is that the owner of the BMP Residence is also the owner of the elephants, as they owned both the property as well as the lodges that we stayed in during our entire trek.

I apologize for the long email, but felt it important to make other travellers aware of the dreadful mistreatment of the elephants at the camp used by the BMP (Backpackers Meeting Place) in Chiang Mai. I am sure that there are Thais that treat their elephants with the loyalty, respect, and love that you would expect for Thailand's "most sacred animal", however they seem to be few and far between......or at least NOT used for tourist enjoyment.

Safe travels everyone!
bryancook "

More on my weblog www.sawatdee-gay-thailand.com/forum/weblog.php?w=15

Similar Threads:

• Poachers kill 11 elephants in worst Kenyan attack
• Huge Asian yacht racing regatta, Asian Marina Yacht
• Asian Men are HOT!
• White elephants

A series of short videos on the plight of the elephant in Thailand today.

www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0510/feature5/video.html

How else do you think a mere human could control an elephant? Kind words and a 'please' never work.
I have never seen an elephant damaged by the ankus instrument and all those I have seen look well fed. I'm sure cases of the opposite exist as was mentioned. Fear controls the beast. And tourists make it possible for low life operators of some elephant camps to continue. Education is the key as with all aspects of life.

Maybe MONTY could start up another charity.

[Dodger]

I visited Dao Nest in Northern Thailand once to witness the training of baby elephants. According to my reading, Dao Nest is the only elephant school in all of Southeast Asia that provides this type of training, specifically intended to teach Kahoots and the young elephants they're teamed with the methods of harvesting Teak, which ends up being the career of over 50% of all Thai elephants.

I talked to one of the Lead Instructors who went on to describe a whole host of uses for the "elephant spike", all of which are included in the training of the young Kahoots, and not one of those methods includes using it as a hammer to bash the skull of an elephant. Some of the uses of the elephant spike include a tool used to pull low hanging fruit from trees, a climbing tool where the Kahoot latches the spike on a tree branch and climbs to where fruit or other edible vegetation is located, a scrapper to remove edible mushrooms from trees, a digging tool for insects and tree roots used for both food and medicinal purposes, and sometimes, although rarely, used as a defensive weapon when the Kahoot and his elephant are alone in the jungle. The "elephant spike" is also considered an honor when first presented to a newly trained Kahoot.

I witnessed the very same ignorant act once when visiting the elephant farm in Pattaya with Boy Special. We no sooner started our ride when the Kahoot lifted his elephant spike straight up in the air and let it fall full strengh on the elephants skull. I grabbed the Kahoot by the back of his neck and started screaming something like..."you mother fucker"...as Boy Special, who was totally panicked by this point, tried to break my hands from the Kahoots neck. We got off the elephant and went storming to the office. I'm sure my complaints fell on deaf ears as they assured me that the Kahoot was new and what he did was not allowed at their Farm, although after I inspected the skull of every single elephant on-site with my camera in hand, I didn't see any other signs of head injuries like the one my elephant just received.

Afterwards, Boy Special, agreeing that the Kahoot was wrong, started lecturing me about how my actions were wrong as well. That's the only time I can recall telling him to just shut the fuck up.



There's good elephant handlers and bad ones. The bad ones should be reported.

I love elephants. They're delicious barbequed with a spicy dipping sauce.

You profess knowledge of elephant training but you don't know the name of the elephant handler? Mahout is the correct term.

Grabbing the mahout might have made you hurt in the end worse than the elephants head.

I visitted an Elephant Farm near Chiang Mai about ten years ago. I was sickened by the methods used but saw only a few idodinised open sores. Some Mahoots seemed only to threaten the eye area of their charges with these nasty hooks.

A few years later my guy and I were staying at the Amari in Pattaya and the tour book for visitors booked through our UK agent had a note about one Elephant Farm in the area that it was not well run and that visits were at customers "own risk". A few weeks later we heard that a British visitor had been killed by an Elephant there. Apparently she had teased the animal, pretending to offer it food, then withdrawing it.

I know thousands of people enjoy Elephant Trekking every year, but how do you avoid the poorly run places?