Mobile Elephant Help in Thailand
Looking After the Health and Wellbeing of the Elephants on Phuket
The Thai elephant is now classed as an endangered species by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species so a Mobile Help Clinic is an asset.
Since logging was banned in 1989 on the 15% of forested land remaining in Thailand, life has been hard for elephants and their mahouts. Of the estimated 300,000 wild and 100,000 domesticated elephants that roamed the countryside at the beginning of the 20th century, there are less than 5,000 today, only 2,000 of which are in the wild.
Squeezed out of their jungle habitats by human encroachment, for some years now elephants and mahouts have been making the long trek from the north of the country to tourist areas in the south. One such place is Phuket, which in 1994 had only 15 elephants, but which today, due to the influx from the north, has two hundred and twenty elephants working in tourism.
Baby elephants are frequently used as inducements by hotels and bars, mature elephants give beach rides and work in entertainment spots, fed with amphetamines to make them work harder,while others are employed in shabby elephants camps. In many cases, a mahout, without money to feed himself and his animal, has no option but to hire out the elephant to one of these places.
A few years ago, Robert Greiffenberg who started the first elephant trekking camp on Phuket at the end of 1994, and Sam-Erik Ruttmam, then G.M. of Phuket’s Dusit Thani Laguna Resort, two men with a passion for these magnificent creatures became concerned about the state of the island’s elephants. They recognised that with the disappearance of the great teak forests and with logging no longer a possibility, the only future for Thai elephants lay in responsible and legal tourism.
A method of treating the elephants when they fell ill or were maimed had to be put in place and to this end they initiated a project to set up a fully equipped vehicle stocked with medicines. This, they worked out, should have the services of a veterinary surgeon who would provide free health check-ups for the elephants, would put in hand a programme of disease prevention, and provide emergency medical services. Mahouts, lacking experience of non-jungle environments would have to be re-educated in the care of the elephants and smaller camps were to be encouraged to adhere to good practices.
The Mobile Elephant Clinic, now affiliated to the Elephant Help Foundation of Thailand was the result.
Today on Phuket, there is a vehicle fully equipped with medicines and basic supplies. A vet, assisted by volunteers, takes care of the animals, and most importantly, a tranquilizer gun was purchased to give them control over the male elephants who in the past were usually shot when they went into musth.
Elephants fall ill with amazing regularity - snake bites, abscesses from untreated cuts and wounds, and wind in the stomach being the most common (the animals were found to have been eating the pesticide-laden roadside grasses and shrubs, leading to chronic sickness and in many cases, death).
Short elephant treks can be enjoyed in the Chalong Highlands of Phuket with Siam Safari, but now tourists can be sure that the elephants are being treated with love and care. Pick-ups can be arranged from most areas in Phuket.
The Mobile Elephant Help Clinic has received many awards for its work, including, in November 2003, The British Guild of Travel Writers Award for best Tourism Project of that year. It is a tourism project in which everyone benefits, the elephants and their mahouts who would otherwise starve or use their animals in undignified ways, the local industries, and the visitors - a perfect environmental answer to the plight of the Thai elephant.
