Fun is serious business as Asian elephants struggle to survive
SURIN, Thailand (Reuters) - Sucking up sugarcane with their trunks and circling busy traffic roundabouts, the elephants that roam Thai towns at festival time seem as much at home in the city as in the forest.
Shows that feature elephants painting pictures, playing polo and whirling hoola hoops on their trunks have become an economic lifeline for more than a thousand domesticated elephants, who lost their incomes when Thailand banned logging in 1989.
But entertaining locals and tourists has become a life or death business for elephants and their keepers, explained Sam Fang, author of Thai Elephants: Tourism Ambassadors of Thailand.
"They had to cope with the ban on logging, and deforestation," Fang said. "First jobless, second no food. Wham!"
Tourism filled the gaps, he said.
"The better elephants got themselves a job as taxis. The intelligent elephants got themselves jobs as show elephants. The smarter ones became artists," he said jokingly.
Unlike larger African elephants, which have never been domesticated in large numbers, Asian elephants have worked closely with humans for millennia.
But this proximity has not helped protect Asia's pachyderms, who are endangered throughout their 13 range states, and ten times less numerous than their African cousins.
"A lot of the attention has tended to go to Africa," said Simon Hedges, co-chair of the World Conservation Union (IUCN)'s Asian Elephant Specialist Group.
"Asian elephants are somewhat the poor relation ... We really don't know how many elephants there are in Asia. In some countries we don't even know where the elephants are."
Estimates put the total wild Asian elephant population at 30,000 to 50,000 and captives at 12,000 to 15,000, he said.
In Thailand, where elephants have been domesticated for more than 4,000 years, there are probably 1,000 domesticated or captive elephants, compared to 3,000 left in the wild.
ELEPHANT ABUSE?
Elephant conservationists such as Sangduen "Lek" Chailert worry that captive elephants, considered beasts of burden in Thailand, have little protection from abuse if their owners work them all day to bring in more tourist dollars.
"Elephants used to be transport for the king, they were very important in history. Today they've just become subservient," said Chailert. Continued...
