Rescuing Thailand’s Elephants

It would take more than a brick to stop Lek. She had been successful in drawing attention to elephant abuse. But she wanted to help the victims: the old, sick and maimed, most of whom were simply shot or abandoned.

What they needed, she decided, was a place they could roam free, but safe and secure. But where? After an exhaustive search, she was given permission to use a government forest area temporarily.

To get the project started, she sold her house, her car and virtually everything she owned. She would use the profits from her travel agency to pay for upkeep. To raise more funds she hoped to attract visitors with a genuine interest in elephants to experience the animals in a natural setting. In 1996, with help from other elephant enthusiasts and wildlife charities, she opened the not-for-profit Elephant Nature Park.

The first arrival, Mae Perm, was a female, like Golden One. The wheel had come full circle.

The elephants found a permanent home in 2003, when a US wildlife charity donated a 16-hectare site located 56 kilometres north of Chiang Mai.

On a sticky, humid May afternoon I arrive at the Elephant Nature Park to be greeted by over a score of trumpeting elephants of all sizes and ages. As the elephants’ mahouts and volunteers unload two pickup trucks full of fresh bananas, watermelon, papaya and grapefruit, many of the park’s pampered guests trundle across the high napier grass meadows for first pickings.

Lek, a slight, energetic woman with dark, smiling eyes, leads me to an elephant calf who only reaches half way up my chest. “This is Mae Toh Koh’s baby, Pupia,” she says proudly, referring to the eight-month-old male elephant. The baby deftly snatches a bunch of small bananas from her grip. “No one knew his mother was pregnant. So they worked her until she got too skinny.”

The calf was so underweight it could not stand up or walk when it was born, and Toh Koh couldn’t produce enough milk for him. But now, under Lek’s care, they are both flourishing.