Where in the World is Marta Senn-Diego? Part 11: Elephant Nature Park

Elephants. They are beautiful, old, instinctive, and magnificent animals. In Thailand, the Asian elephant has been highly regarded in both religious and social aspects. They carried kings into battle, were painted for holy holidays, and were as common for transportation as horses have been in the West. One of their gods, Lord Ganesha, is an elephant-headed deity.

And yet, despite all the reverence, elephants have been horribly and sickeningly abused-- not only in Thailand, but around the world. One (formerly) common use for elephants was in the logging industry, helping to clear their own natural habitats, rainforests. They dragged enormous logs by chains attached to their legs. Elephants are strong, absurdly strong, but even non-stop, back breaking manual labor like that is often too much for some to bear. Eventually, the Thai people realized the rainforests were a necessity and banned logging in the country. Burma, however, wasn't so quick to follow suit and today, elephants are still logging.

Another offense is also a very controversial subject: elephant riding and trekking. Here's the thing: as I said, elephants are amazingly strong animals. They can carry an adult human easily. They might as well have a mosquito on their shoulders. But the second that mosquito puts an uncomfortable metal frame on their back and forces the elephant to wear it and load after load of noisy, squirming people for eight hours or more a day...it becomes a different story. "Camps" and "parks" where the main attraction is riding an elephant often may mean that elephant has been working in the scorching Thai sun for hours.

The wild elephants of Thailand used to be in the hundreds of thousands. Now they are a miniscule fraction of that. Many more elephants are domesticated and working in tourism, either trekking or painting, in circuses and even begging on the street. In these cases, young elephants live with their mahouts under bridges or on the outskirts of a city and in the evening, journey into the city streets to draw crowds of tourists. The mahout sells bananas to the tourists who then pay for the chance to feed and pet the baby elephant. The problem is the animals are usually underfed and over stressed because the sensitive pads of their feet, which they use to feel seismic vibrations in the ground are overstimulated by the traffic and noise of the city.

One of the biggest problems in Thailand is the discrepancy over whether or not elephants should be domesticated. When they are, they're considered "legal" and unabused in trekking camps because they're in the same category as livestock like horses and cattle.

So with such a diminished population, you might think the best course is a breeding program. Heartbreakingly, forced breeding is often painful and dangerous. I saw the effect of not only forced breeding but also logging, poorly conducted tourism operations, landmines, and just plain cruelty at the Elephant Nature Park.

Many elephants suffer broken or dislocated hips from forced breeding

ENP is located over an hour north of Chiang Mai, Thailand. To get there, you have to drive out of the city and into the beautiful northern Thailand jungle. The road twists and bends and climbs deeper and deeper into rainforest. As you near the somewhat misnamed park, you spy the sanctified orange sashes tied around trees here and there along the road. In an effort to protect the jungle from deforestation, ENP's founder, Lek, participates in the practice by having sashes blessed and they tying them around the trees. The trees are then considered holy and cutting them would be sacrilege.

The park is in a remote valley by a river. Small villages surround the valley and elephant trekking companies are nearby. It's strange. While we rode the ENP's shuttle van past these parks, we watched an introductory video on ENP and Lek's no-chains, no force, no riding methods. Then we'd look out the windows at elephants bearing metal saddles or chained in stalls.

Lek started the park in the early 2000s with just a small patch of land and about five abused elephants she bought one by one from their mahouts. First, Lek is not wealthy. She is the granddaughter of a town healer, with a holistic and loving view of elephants. She lives at the park in any spare bed because she doesn't have a house. The park was built on her blood, sweat and a lot of tears. She wholeheartedly believes that elephants deserve all the love and respect we as humans can give them.

The park has grown and now there are over 30 elephants including a few calves who were born at the park and never "broken." While they're cute, this also makes them more dangerous, but also great successes in the park's mission.

Visitors can stay at the park in a variety of ways: for just a day visit to feed, photograph and learn about the elephants; overnight for more of the same; a week to two weeks to work and help the elephants and also the hundreds of dogs on the property; and sometimes longer.

I opted to stay for a week. And I left, knowing I'd be back. The work was tiring, but (and I know this is going to sound cliche) amazingly rewarding. Everything that you're asked to do is in direct relation to the elephants whether you're helping cut corn, tossing watermelons, making tamarind and rice balls (yes, elephants love onigiri!), carrying tasty banana trees, or the most lovely job of all, scooping poop, is for the benefit of the elephants. I'll go into more detail about the week later. I just want to conclude here with the link to Lek's program and this simple request:

Look into it. I went to Elephant Nature Park thinking I'd have a good time and get to see some elephants. I didn't realize my eyes would open to a world of pain, love, desperation and Hope.

www.elephantnaturepark.org