The Uphill Battle to End Elephant Rides Throughout Asia

During the brief period of time a tourist may spend with an elephant in Asia, it’s impossible to fully grasp the brutal realities of the animal’s life.

When not giving rides or performing for a tourist’s entertainment, elephants are chained all day and night, often on chains less than three meters long.

They are fed poor diets and given no opportunity to socialize, which is traumatizing for such highly-intelligent creatures who are used to forming strong social bonds and living in tight-knit clans.

Making matters worse, they receive only limited veterinary care and are frequently kept on concrete floors, according to World Animal Protection, a global non-profit organization working in more than 50 countries and on six continents.

None of which takes into account the torture and trauma the elephant endured during its earliest years.

In the wild, elephant mothers and their children stay together throughout life. But those used in tourist attractions have been snatched from their mothers and their herds while babies.

After that, the torture begins. Elephants in captivity throughout Asia are subjected to a violent and punishing ritual known as Phajaan, or crushing of their spirit, in order to “train” them for a life of serving and amusing tourists. It’s a practice that has been reported on by various organizations and publications over the years, but perhaps none as poignantly as National Geographic in 2002.

“It's a sound not easily forgotten. Just before dawn in the remote highlands of northern Thailand, west of the village Mae Jaem, a four-year-old elephant bellows as seven village men stab nails into her ears and feet. She is tied up and immobilized in a small, wooden cage. Her cries are the only sounds to interrupt the otherwise quiet countryside. The cage is called a "training crush.” – National Geographic.

As the publication explained, Phajaan is the centerpiece of a centuries-old practice in northern Thailand that's inflicted on countless young elephants. In addition to beatings, handlers use sleep-deprivation, hunger, and thirst to “break" the elephants' spirit and make them submissive.

This practice so horrified some tour companies, that in 2010, a few began turning their backs on selling elephant rides in Asia entirely.

The first tour operator to make that important decision was TUI Nederland, which stopped all sales and promotion of venues offering elephant rides. Their bold move was soon followed by several other operators including Intrepid Travel who, in 2014, was first to stop such sales and promotions on a global scale.

By early 2017, more than 160 travel companies had made similar commitments. And to date, 226 travel companies have ceased selling or promoting venues that offer elephant rides or shows.

"I think it's a groundswell now. While Intrepid is the biggest adventure company to stop offering elephant rides, there are a few very big tourism operators that have also stopped offering elephant rides in the past 12 to 24 months and that will help other operators to see it can be done," Geoff Manchester, Intrepid's co-founder told TravelPulse during a recent interview.

Equally notable, in 2016 TripAdvisor announced it would end the sale of tickets for wildlife experiences where tourists come into direct contact with captive wild animals, including elephants. This decision, according to World Animal Protection, was in response to 550,000 people taking action to demand that TripAdvisor stop profiting from the world’s cruelest wildlife attractions.

While all of this would seem like good news, and it is, the reality is that for elephants in Asia, very little has improved. In fact, in recent years, things have actually gotten worse.

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Despite the apparent tide change a few years back among hundreds of tour operators who opted to no longer sell elephant rides in Asia, the numbers of elephants in captivity have increased, Audrey Mealia, global head of wildlife at World Animal Protection, told TravelPulse.

“There has been a 30 percent rise in the number of elephants at tourism venues in Thailand since 2010,” explained Mealia. “In our most recent study, 357 more elephants were found living in poor welfare conditions in Thailand than five years earlier.”

That increase corresponds with rising numbers of tourists visiting Thailand, many of whom come expecting elephant rides, which in turn has continued to fuel the industry. More than 2,000 of the elephants surveyed by World Animal Protection were being used for saddled rides or shows and the scale of suffering at most of the venues is severe.

Here’s a small snapshot of the realities on the ground for elephants throughout Asia today, according to World Animal Protection’s latest report, entitled “Taken for a Ride: The Conditions for Elephants Used in Tourism in Asia”:

— More than 3,000 elephants are used in tourism in Asia

—World Animal Protection surveyed 2,923 of those elephants and found that three out of four are living in poor and unacceptable conditions.

—Some larger venues receive more than 1,000 visitors a day. The elephants there are continually required to give rides, perform, and interact with tourists with no opportunity to interact in social groups or rest. These same large venues are responsible for some of the poorest welfare conditions observed.

—When not working with the public, the elephants are chained up using very short chains, often without the benefit of shade, food or water for long periods.

—Between 2010 and 2015, the largest increase of elephants into the tourism industry occurred at lower-welfare venues, such as conventional elephant-ride venues that chain elephants for most of the day

“It’s still a big education piece as far as the traveler goes, plenty of people still see elephant riding as a thing on their bucket list and want to do it,” continued Intrepid's Manchester. "I think it's a long-term issue, which is one of the reasons we continue to work on it. There's been some good traction in the English speaking world, but a lot of the growth in travel is taking place in the non-English speaking world, so there's a long way to go in educating all travelers."

While Thailand is home to the vast majority of elephant entertainment offerings, they’re also found in Laos, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and India. No matter where the venue is located, tourists are often fed a romanticized or skewed picture of the elephant’s existence.

“Tourists should remember that almost every adult captive elephant in Asia has been subjected to cruel training in order to be used for rides, visitor interactions, or performances,” said Mealia.

This is a critical point to get clear.

There has recently been a shift in Thailand, with camps advertising that they no longer offer rides, explained Mealia. Some instead are switching to direct contact activities such as washing elephants, walking with them and feeding them.

“Indeed, many camps are keen to publicize that they no longer offer rides - featuring this prominently in their promotional materials. It’s seen as a selling point,” continued Mealia.

However, in order for these types of activities to take place, the elephants still have to undergo torture, which brings us back to the issue of Phajaan. If you can ride or touch an elephant, or watch it perform, chances are the elephant has been subjected to cruel and inhumane training.

As World Animal Protection’s report points out: "A wild elephant would never let a human ride on its back, nor submit to performing unnatural behaviors in shows. The process of people gaining control over the elephant starts early on in their life in captivity. All wild caught and captive bred elephants undergo such cruel training in their early years for use in riding and shows, and also for use in situations where visitors may closely interact with the animals. This training process has been handed down from generation to generation and remains an extremely cruel process.”

Like National Geographic’s eye-opening account, the World Animal Protection report also details the heartwrenching ordeal elephants suffer as part of Phajaan, noting that while there are slight regional variations of the process, it always typically begins with the calf being separated from its mother at an early age.

“It will then be restrained by chains or ropes and prevented from moving unless commanded to by the trainer or mahout. Often it does not have the space to sit down. In many cases, severe pain is inflicted to speed up the process, including stabbing with hooks or other tools to establish dominance over the elephant. Well-known footage of this procedure being inflicted on newly captured elephants shows severe abuse and extreme stress and pain for the animal.

To be clear, plenty of elephants do not survive this process. Many die before the crushing routine is over. Still, others go crazy and have to be destroyed.

In September 2017, World Animal Protection hosted a conference in the Thai capital of Bangkok. The goal was to present an elephant-friendly alternative business model to existing camps that wished to transition away from elephant shows and rides to a form of business that allows the elephants to roam freely, graze, and bath in the mud, having no direct interaction with tourists but instead allowing visitors to observe them.

The event was well attended. In the end, more than 15 camps volunteered for the program and the first camp completing the transition is set to reopen its doors this month just north of Chiang Mai. Formerly known as Happy Elephant Valley, the camp’s new name is ChangChill.

While this example is a glimmer of hope for the future, life remains unchanged for the vast majority of elephants in Asia’s tourism industry. There are still countless elephants trapped in brutal lives, providing rides for a never-ending stream of tourists each day or performing absurd tricks for tourists' amusement.

“For a successful phase-out of the captive elephant tourism industry to take place, the demand for elephant rides must decrease, along with an increase in support for elephant-friendly venues, to create a real shift for better conditions for the existing captive elephants,” said Mealia.

World Animal Protection has started a campaign known as “Wildlife. Not Entertainers.” which aims to end the suffering of wild animals used in the tourism entertainment industry. The strength of the campaign is in building a worldwide groundswell movement to protect wildlife, said Mealia.

In other words, the travel industry, governments, elephant owners and handlers, local communities, and individual travelers, all have a role to play in the solution.

The travel industry can do its part by helping to prove that tourists are seeking higher-welfare elephant venues, not elephant rides or elephants that can paint.

“Ultimately reducing demand for the elephant rides is important,” said Intrepid’s Manchester. “As long as there is demand, someone will keep supplying. The more we can cut demand, the more suppliers will realize they have to come up with an alternative.”

World Animal Protection, meanwhile, continues working to raise awareness among tourists. About 1.6 million people have already joined WAP’s global movement for elephants and other wild animals, many of whom had previously ridden an elephant or engaged in some form of cruel animal experience.

The non-profit also continues to work with travel companies to encourage them to cease offering and promoting elephant entertainment, while also working to convince existing elephant venues to become elephant-friendly, observation-only venues. And soon, the organization will celebrate its first milestone on this front, the relaunch of Happy Elephant Valley as ChangChill, a reimagined place where elephants will have the possibility of truly being "happy."

“We're making great strides in exposing the cruelty that lies behind elephant riding and performances, but there's so much work to be done,” concluded Mealia. “Many camps continue offering shows and rides or other forms of direct visitor interaction, and the number of elephants in captivity continues to grow.”

What you can do as a tourist:

—While the cruel and inhumane training elephants have suffered can’t be undone, it is important to avoid activities that depend on constant control of elephants. Do the right thing for elephants and only visit elephant-friendly venues where you can observe elephants from afar, where they’re free to roam, graze, and bathe in mud, dust, and water.

—The highest quality of life for captive Asian elephants is in venues meeting World Animal Protection elephant-friendly standards that allow them to free roam, interact in social groups, and choose when and what they want to do.

— Demand that the tourism industry takes greater accountability for where they send their customers by replacing elephant rides and other wild animal entertainment activities with activities that safeguard animal welfare.

—Call upon governments become part of the solution, and devise and enforce policies that protect their wildlife in captivity and in the wild.