Elephants are gentle, beautiful, and incredibly intelligent creatures. That makes them popular among animal enthusiasts worldwide, but it also makes them easy targets for predatory tourism practices.
Understandably, tourists from around the world would jump at the opportunity to see, meet, or even ride an elephant. However, they aren’t aware of the harmful effects that these activities can have on the elephants used for these purposes.
Read on to find out more about the elephant tourism industry, what we could do better for these beautiful animals, and how you could work with elephants abroad to help rehabilitate them back into their natural habitat.
The impact of elephant tourism
Elephants are a core part of global eco-tourism, an increasingly popular multi-billion dollar industry. Much of this industry is made up of regulated safaris in protected national parks, photography tours, and ethical sanctuaries; largely positive and unintrusive tourism practices.
However, there are serious problems when you start to look towards elephant-specific experiences. One country where this continues to be an issue is Thailand, where there is inconsistent enforcement surrounding animal rights.
Elephant riding in Thailand surged in popularity in the 1990s when commercial logging was banned and many people, along with their captive elephants, suddenly found themselves out of work.
They turned to the booming tourism industry, and used the elephants they controlled to their advantage. They allowed people to get up close and personal with these animals, setting up whole camps designed exclusively for riding, bathing, and feeding experiences.
These elephant tourist camps continued to be a success through the 2000s and into the 2010s, but have been increasingly exposed for having severely unethical practices. Despite this, many continued to operate unchanged thanks to demand.
Why elephant riding and bathing experiences are harmful
Setting up entire tourist camps that allow people to touch and directly interact with elephants with no conservation or ecological benefit is invasive and unethical. That’s before you take into account how the elephants got there and the conditions they live in.
Here are just some of the main reasons why elephant riding and bathing experiences are unethical.
Elephants are isolated from their herd
Simply put, if an elephant is in a tourist camp, then it is not in the wild and it is working against its will. Captive elephants are often taken from their mothers at a very young age and forced to work by camp owners.
Elephants are very social creatures with complex relationships and structures within their herds. Being taken out of this environment and forced to interact only with humans is both lonely and stressful for these elephants.
The brutal practice of Phajaan
Roughly translating to “breaking of the spirit” and better known as “the crush”, Phajaan is an awful example of animal abuse, the specifics of which don’t merit exploring. Long story short, young elephants are locked in cages too small for them and tortured into submission.
This results in lifelong trauma, which ensures the affected elephant follows human commands through fear. This practice means that camp workers have strict control over their animals, forcing them to stay in one place for a long time for bathing or go without food so they can be fed by tourists.
World Animal Protection believes that this process has happened to almost all of the estimated 3,000 elephants in tourist camps in Thailand alone.
The living conditions are often poor
Despite being taken from their natural environment, captive elephants often live in far worse conditions than wild ones. To start, the tourism practices forced upon them often cause immense amounts of stress, leading to anxiety, pain, and lasting health issues.
In fact, riding elephants can cause pain and damage to their spines over time thanks to the weight of the wooden seats on their backs. Bathing elephants can also cause harm by stripping the natural protective oils of their skin and causing painful irritation.
When they aren’t actively engaging with tourists, many elephants are kept in small living areas and tied up with chains to prevent movement. They are also often not fed enough or given sufficient water, and do not receive professional veterinary care.
All of this is just scratching the surface, but proves why regular tourists should not book these kinds of experiences. Funding these tourist camps will only continue the cycle of abuse, and there are ethical alternatives where you can see elephants for yourself.
How to identify truly ethical elephant sanctuaries
If you love elephants and you’d like to see them for yourself, how can you be sure that you are finding ethical elephant tourism experiences? One of the main things to look out for is whether what you’re booking is strictly observation only.
This is almost always the case with things like safaris and photography tours, where you will observe the animals in their natural habitat from a distance, take photos, and not directly interfere with them.
Take the advice of Action for Elephants UK and ask yourself: “does the activity prioritise the animal’s welfare above all else?”
As soon as an experience mentions meeting, petting, feeding, or touching the elephant in any way, you should approach it with extreme caution. There are some cases where this behaviour is acceptable, usually where rehabilitation or veterinary work is concerned, but these opportunities are very rare, especially when it comes to elephants.
But, did you know that you could also work to support elephants directly affected by the tourism industry in Thailand? Our elephant volunteer project in Chiang Mai does exactly that, approaching the topic in an ethical, observation-focused way.
We also have a similar project in Cambodia exclusively for teenagers, where you can work with rescued elephants and bears at ethical sanctuaries.
How you can help: an ethical elephant volunteer programme
Travel to the mountain forests of northern Thailand and join expert conservationists in rehabilitating elephants who have retired from the tourism industry. You’ll live in a remote village in Chiang Mai province and conduct strictly observation-only research.
You’ll observe elephant behaviour, populations, and movements as these elephants adapt to life again in a semi-wild environment. Your findings will be used to monitor the health and adaptation of rehabilitating individuals while also informing future conservation efforts.
You’ll learn about the traditional role of the local mahouts, elephant caretakers that date back more than a thousand years. You’ll learn about how this community has coexisted with and grown alongside Asian elephants for such a long time.
Also on this project, you will immerse in the local village culture, understand biodiversity in the region by monitoring birds and gibbons, and gain real skills in the world of conservation.
Interested? You can find out all the details on the project page – click the button that’s right for you below!
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