Today was abolutely amazing - one of my favorite days thus far here. We went to an Elephant Park that was started by a woman who grew up in a village, seeing how elephants are treated for the tourist trade. 100 years ago, there were 100,000 elephants in Thailand. Today, there are only 5,000. THey were used as laborers for logging, working to kill their own habitats and many becoming severely injured or killed. The logging trade was stopped when they realized the flooding from the monsoons became worse due to logging. However, once it stopped, there were many domestiated elephants who now had no job and no ability to live in the wild. Many, of course died and many have been used for tourism. We learned that the elephants used for tourism, including city street begging are treated extremely poorly to break them of their wild nature and to try to tame them. It is dispicable to see what they villge people do to the elephants, greatly hurting them.
This woman (Lek) "rescues" elephants by buying them from people who would otherwise mistreat them (she's the one in the photo holding onto the baby). She was able to start this center by a donation from a man from Austin, TX and keeps it going by donations and people like us paying to go and visit. She has 34 elephants now that she takes care of, feeds, etc andtries to teach them to live a more natural life and give them healthcare when she rescues them, when often badly injured.
We were able to feed the elephants, pet them, walk with them and even swim with them and bathe them. They are magnificant creatures - I now understand why my Grammy loves elephants so much! They are very gentle, basically just using their strength for protection. They also very much like affection, even from humans. There were babies that just loved to play and be touchd. They even played with a soccer ball!
All of the elephants had at least one human handler (called a Mahoot) to take care of them. The people who end up doing this are chosen because an elephants develops a bond with them. It's very seet to see them together. One elephant, Hope was rescued after he was orphoned when his mother was killed. He's quite a rowdy teenager and actually has to have 2 mahoots. He also wears a bell around his neck so they always know where he is.
Another one, Nokia was blinded when she was used for logging work. She was pregnant when she was brought to do this and was working when her baby was born. She was not able to stop and take care of her baby and the baby died. She was heartbroken and started refusing to work. They were mean to her, poking her and eventually blinded her by harsh measures to force her to work. Thank God she was rescued by this wonderful woman. She is a very sweet elephant.
My favorite was Medo who had beautiful markings and perhaps one of the sweetest temperaments. She was rescued having a broken back because she was hit by a car. She doesn't look quite the same as the othes and likely experiences a lot of pain. However, she is now very well taken care of and is shown lots of love every day. The elephants adopt the new ones who come in and they travel in packs so that there are always ones who are very close to each other and take care of each other.
If you ever make it to Thailand, I strongly recommend making a visit to this wonderful place. It's a great experience and your money goes to such a good cause. You can even do overnight trips and can also volunteer there for a week or two. And of course they take donations so that they can rescue more hurt and threatened elephants.
http://www.elephantnaturepark.org
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