Celebrating National Thai Elephant Day, and Beyond….
It was National Thai Elephant Day on Sunday 13th March and celebrations around the country saw elephants and their mahouts being treated to feasts and festivities in their honour. As the national animal of Thailand, the Asian elephant is steeped in its culture and even the national flag used to feature an elephant. So in 1998 when the government announced an annual day of recognition to raise public awareness of the importance of elephants, it was welcomed and continues to be a popular date in the Thai calendar.
Our project partner, the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation (GTAEF), blessed their elephants and mahouts in a traditional ceremony and held the mandatory buffet especially for the pampered pachyderms. These festivities were followed by a talk by Director of Elephants, John Roberts, who spoke about the problems facing the elephants of Thailand and what GTAEF is doing to help them. John is unlike many others in Thailand, as his project sets a truly positive example for how to support Thailand’s captive elephant population. When logging was banned in 1989, it was great news for the forests but devastating to the thousands of people and elephants that depended on the logging to survive. Many had no choice but to take to the noisy and crowded streets and use their elephants to beg. GTAEF provides viable alternative livelihoods for elephants and their mahouts, while the elephants also benefit from healthcare, exercise, food supplements and a much better way of life. To discourage wildlife trade, elephants are not bought but ‘rented’ along with their mahouts, and through GTAEF they educate the public and schoolchildren about Asian elephants and the importance of protecting the species.
However, Thai Elephant Day is still predominantly reserved for celebrating Thailand’s captive elephants, of which there are thought to be around 4,000. Most work in the tourist trade, which is perhaps why these elephants gain more recognition than the country's remaining 3,000 or so wild elephants, which are not as visible. Yet the latter are being increasingly threatened by the breaking up of habitat, and from the conflict with people that results, as is the case across much of the Asian elephant's range.
Elephant Family is therefore exploring innovative solutions to raise awareness of the wild elephants' plight - and where necessary confront people's changing attitudes to them - by investing in education, training and research. In Thailand, we are starting by investing in a series of Thai-English educational storybooks with the Elephant Conservation Network. Written and illustrated by students aged 7-18 through a process of class instruction, family engagement and public competition, the books will be about wild elephants, the threats they face and the ecosystem they live in. The goal is to raise awareness among young people in a participatory way that leads to increased engagement and a better understanding of the issues affecting human-elephant co-existence.
Beyond this, novel approaches from a social and cultural perspective will be identified with our project partners, and merged with the more conventional approaches of ecology and conservation biology to add value to our projects. To find out more about our future plans and projects, watch this space for a new section on the website dedicated to this exciting new area of our work.
Photo courtesy of John Roberts, GTAEF
written by Carly Vincent on 16th March 11
