Prospects low for Thailand elephants

Most complaints of elephant abuse focus on the way the animals are tamed. Anantara employs a humane but time-consuming “tickling” method, but many camps still use phaajaan (the Thai word for “crush”), a method of domesticating baby elephants that has been practiced in Thailand for thousands of years. This ceremony involves separating youngsters from their mothers, tying them up in a confined space, jabbing them with knives, heated irons, burning cigarettes and bamboo sticks embedded with nails, pummeling them with stones and other projectiles and depriving them of food, water and sleep. It lasts for up to six days, until a shaman senses that the elephant’s spirit is broken. Afterward, the animal is never again permitted to see its mother.

Animal rights groups condemn not only the phaajaans but also “imprisoning” the animals and training them to perform tricks. But because the elephant camps are privately run, Thai officials find it difficult to address abuses. Moreover, repeated turnover in governments - there have been three in 20 months - means that any high-level directives don’t stick for long, and interest in the issue waxes and wanes.

The best hope for Thailand’s elephants would be government backing for sanctuaries such as Elephant Nature Park and Elephant Haven, two private, nonprofit sanctuaries near the Burmese border that were established by animal rights activist Sangduen “Lek” Chailert to allow elephants to live in a protected natural setting.

A system of national parks could provide Thailand and its tourist industry another valuable revenue stream. But the biggest payoff would be helping replenish the once robust population of Asian elephants, now only about one-tenth the size of Africa’s (which numbers between 470,000 and 690,000, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources).

Without sufficient funding and official support, though, this seems unlikely to happen anytime soon. So most of the burden of easing the pachyderm population’s decline falls on elephant camps, which need better oversight and improvements to make sure that they operate humanely.

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