Elephant Nature Park,Chiang
Elephant Nature Park is a sanctuary and rescue centre for elephants in Mae Taeng District, Chiang Mai Province, Northern Thailand, approximately 60 kilometres from Chiang Mai City, co-founded by Sangduen "Lek" Chailert.
Overview
Elephant Nature Park is a sanctuary and rescue centre for elephants in Mae Taeng District, Chiang Mai Province, Northern Thailand, approximately 60 kilometres (37 mi) from Chiang Mai City, co-founded by Sangduen "Lek" (Thai for "Shorty") Chailert.In 2013 Erawan Elephant Retirement Park opened in western Thailand as an offshoot. By 2016 there were branch elephant parks in Suri and in Cambodia, and there were plans to open a fifth park in Phuket. By then the work was coordinated by the Save the Elephant Foundation.
The parks provide sanctuary for rescued elephants and operate under a business model in which tourists pay to visit and help care for the animals, and can stay for extended periods.
One of the first sanctuaries for rescued elephants in Chiang Mai, Elephant Nature Park has led the movement to abandon rides and shows and put elephant welfare at the top of the agenda, under the guidance of founder Sangduen (Lek) Chailert. Visits are focused on interaction – the day is spent wandering with mahouts and their charges, helping feed and wash elephants.
As is the case with all of the better elephant camps, the elephants here have been rescued from logging camps and tourist shows. The most rewarding experience is seeing the interaction between the elephants, with baby elephants having trunk tug-of-wars, families enjoying shared mud baths and older elephants taking care of blind and disabled members of the herd.
History
Lek Chailert started working on elephant conservation in 1996.Teak logging, in which many elephants were used, had been banned in Thailand in 1989, and those elephants had been abandoned or sold for use in the tourist industry or for begging in cities.Elephants are also left maimed after poachers take their ivory.
In the late 1990s the government of Thailand was working to promote ecotourism in Chiang Mai Province; tourism brought in 350 million dollars in 1997 and was the province's biggest source of revenue; the ecotourism plans were controversial with indigenous people there.
By 1998, an organization called Green Tours run by Adam Flinn had founded Elephant Nature Park, a tourist site and reserve for rescued elephants in a valley about an hour north of Chiang Mai, with Chailert, who owned some of the land and leased some from the Thai government.At that time the park featured a daily elephant show where elephants performed tricks like balancing on one leg and playing football, and included elephant rides.She maintained a more isolated section up one of the surrounding mountains for especially damaged animals that she called "Elephant Heaven."The park had 34 rescued elephants.Her goal was to eventually end the performances and run it purely as a reserve.
By 2002 Chailert was well known for campaigning against elephant crushing and around that time a documentary about the treatment of elephants in Thailand featuring Chailert's work was released; in response, PETA called for a boycott of Thailand until conditions there changed.
By 2005 the boycott campaign had made Chailert an embarrassment to the Thai government and had led to death threats and to Friends of the Asian Elephant, a government-funded organization that had done work to improve conditions for elephants, ending its funding for Chailert's work.Chailert was listed in a special 2005 post-tsunami issue of the Asian edition of Time magazine as one of "Asia's heroes".By 2005 17 of the elephants Chailert had rescued were adults, and she had also opened a travel agency in Chiang Mai.By this time the park no longer offered performances and had shifted to a business model in which visitors could come help care for the elephants.