Bangkok's Elephants Beg For Survival

[george]

Bangkok's elephants beg for survival

BANGKOK: -- It's not an uncommon sight in this city of 7.2 million to see an elephant and its mahout, or trainer, come lumbering along, sometimes causing a traffic jam. Elephants visit almost every major urban center in Thailand, including the edges of sprawling Bangkok, begging for food.

The Asian elephant may still be a revered cultural icon in this country, gracing bas-reliefs of temples and serving as the royal emblem of the monarchy, but these days, it is woefully unemployed.

Worse, in a country whose civilization was more or less built on its back, the elephant is fast disappearing. More than 100,000 existed at the beginning of last century. At the beginning of the 21st, there were fewer than 5,000 -- 2,000 of them still in the wild.

Now classified as an endangered species, the Asian elephant is expected to disappear from the country altogether -- except perhaps in zoos and a few nature reserves -- around 2050.

There are many reasons why Asian elephants are disappearing, but the main culprit -- the scourge of all wildlife -- is deforestation. For domesticated elephants, deforestation means that they no longer have jobs. Logging in Thailand's forests have always relied on the power of powerful pachyderms.

An elephant can pull half of its own weight and carry 1,500 pounds on its back. In hilly country sides where roads are small and trucks inaccessible, an elephant is indispensable for the timber business. But logging is all but illegal now in Thailand, and timber comes mostly now from Burma. And the domesticated elephant, it seems, is running out of luck.

The news is worse for the wild elephant. Only about 15 percent of the country is still forestland. What is left is scattered, so the forest habitat can no longer sustain large herds and that forces elephants to raid farm crops at the edge of the forest where they are often either shot or poisoned by farmers.

It's the story of miserable beasts pitted against the impoverished humans. If an elephant is out of work, so is its mahout.

Some mahouts simply can no longer feed their charges. An average elephant consumes 30 gallons of water and 440 pounds of food a day. Which is why owners curb breeding among the captive beasts, bringing down their population even more. Some owners turn their elephants into ignoble urban beggars.

Not easy a task at that, when your pet weighs around 11,000 lbs and walks at 5 mph on the highway.

"I feel bad for the elephants," observes Silvy Tongurai, a tour guide who loves feeding the beasts because she thinks it's good for her karma.

"They get hit by trucks and vans sometimes because they have the same color as the road and drivers can't avoid them in time. If there's food in the forest, they wouldn't have to come to the city to beg and get killed."

The lucky few end up at Baan Pang Lah Nature Reserve, near Chiang Mai. One of a handful of national parks in the country, the park is home to 40 elephants. In the afternoon, dozens of them frolic in a lake with their mahouts and are more than happy to do tricks for visitors to earn their keep. A few play xylophones, three of them favor a game of soccer, and two even paint in two very different abstract styles.

The reservation comes complete with a hospital for the injured beasts. Dr. Sarun Sansistwate, the main veterinarian of the sanctuary, keeps track of all his wards -- broken back, maimed by land mines, shot by poachers -- but he says resources are ebbing while needs are on the rise. In a modernizing world , the elephant simply is falling out of favor.

There are only around 35,000 elephants left in all of Asia, and in Vietnam, there are fewer than 150 -- what some biologists consider a lost cause.

Tourism may be the thing that saves the day. Elephants take visitors to into the mountains to search for what's left of the precious natural world in Laos, China and Thailand.

In Thailand, the elephant stands a fighting chance. After all, the elephant is to the Thai what the bald eagle is to Americans and what the panda is to the Chinese.

There's more at stake here than just the elephant. There are lots of creatures not so well loved, or well known: tigers and pangolins and flat- nosed bears and hawksbill turtles and the kouprey ox, plus thousands of other species, large and small and wondrous, all facing extinction.

"The natural world is everywhere disappearing before our eyes," warns Edward O. Wilson, biologist and author of "The Future of Life." "Species of plants and animals are disappearing a hundred or more times faster than before the coming of humanity, and as many as half may be gone by the end of the end of the century."

It is late afternoon, and the show at Baan Pang Lah nature reserve is over. Amid cheers and applause, the dozen performing elephants line up, trunks to tail, forming a convoy in a scene often depicted on carved ivory tusks. Slowly, they walk out of visitors' view, as if fading into myth.

-- PNS 2004-06-20

[anamore]

You are right George. I saw 2 elephants in bkk, in the middle of the city.

It was a sad sight.

Because of economical development or due to lack of it nature is doomed to disappear and this goes for it's inhabitants as well.

Even in thailand is difficult to find a place where you don't hear noise of cars of other machines.

When I find a place where I can listen to the silence or to the noises of nature I feel as if something extraordinary is happening. It's nearly to be compared to a religious experience. I live in a smal city but I love the nature.

We are not only making life impossible for many animal species and plants but we are also making the future of mankind very fragile, by destroying the natural sources of the earth.

I wish thailand would look at the mistakes made in other continents to learn from it, but I think the country is developing very fast and not paying enough attention to environmental issues.