Elephant Tails - Anantara Resorts & Spas - Thailand

...on why it is important to keep mahouts smiling if you want to put a smile on an elephant's face.

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 02:06:00 GMT

It seems odd but, in this cut and thrust world we live in, I am often asked whether we treat our mahouts too well? I'm not going to point fingers and name names but there is a great perception there in the outside world that perhaps we've gone a step or two too far in cosseting our elephant owning friends by not only catering to the every whim of their elephants but by covering enough of their living costs that they are seen to have the same level disposable income that, for instance, a normal hotel employee would have, several steps up from hand to mouth villager; all the mahouts, it seems, now have mobile phones and we must have the highest percentage of Toyota Hiluxes and shiny new motorbikes among the staff than any other ele camp in the world - that all the money we pay now goes to pay off bank loans is not necessarily my fault, I offer free ele care, not financial advice (though, being me, I have been prone to asking a few folks whose income I know intimately because I sign the cheques whether they are not just a little crazy).

    It is also true that villagers who started delivering elephant food to our four elephants six years ago used to borrow farmer's single cylinder diesel engine powered trucks (glorified rotivators, lot e-ten in local parlance) now deliver in shiny pick-ups.

    To be honest it makes me feel good to see, but we do set ourselves up as a scientific charity and there's always the question, where's the line? At what point do you cease to protect what you set out to save? At what point do you breed reliance on your project and therefore become unsustainable?

    I have to admit, if I were a mahout's son, I wouldn't choose to follow in my father's footsteps (though you could probably guess this of me as even though I wasn't a mahout's son I didn't follow in my father's footsteps), however I don't come from a strong tribal tradition where my father's trade is also my cultural identity - those farmers out there may understand the connection rather better than me, why would you choose a trade that you know will be tough and never make you any money?

    So let's admit it is in the blood, as part of their identity these guys have to own an elephant (and the validity and purpose of that cultural identity in the modern world is a debate I keep promising you I'll have), but elephants don't grow on trees and they can no longer be caught from the wild so somebody has to procure an elephant, the luckiest have one born to the family but even then there are stud fees and, of course, the cost of raising the elephant until it can earn a living. Those that don't have an elephant have to find one from somewhere and that, in the vast majority of cases, involves borrowing money - either from the banks or, as an elephant isn't really good collateral, from less formal places (who, of course, carry their own terms).

    Once you have the elephant, though, the job isn't over, the forest to let them go and forage between jobs no longer exists so you find yourself with a very large mouth to feed in addition to the more normal human task of looking after your family and in order to do that you must follow your chosen (or that which is thrust upon you) profession - you must go and be a mahout.

    For those of us in the business of trying to provide an alternative lifestyle for the elephant than living on the street or working hour after hour in trekking camps I believe it is essential that we start looking at mahout and elephant as small business units in their own right, that we don't look at the rent we pay as a handout or a wage, that we don't look at the fodder we give as a gift to help underprivileged people - it is not enough to provide just what is required and expect them to be grateful for the honour of survival, we wouldn't consider argument with normal employees (who among us would consider working just to make ends meet, who doesn't want a quality of life, a chance to save for the future?) why would we consider it with our mahouts.

    Now, I see the argument that we shouldn't over pamper, that if life gets too comfortable then it will be difficult to dissuade sons from following fathers and in the grand, scientific, sense sons following fathers in this particular tradition is something that we should ask ourselves whether we want to encourage but, at this stage in the proceedings the official policy is to maintain or even increase the domestic population - if this is your policy you will need the next generation of instinctive, born-on-the-elephant, mahouts.

    Quite apart from anything else, if the good mahouts default on their loans the elephants fall into the hands of those who don't know much about elephants at all but know all about making money and, whatever your vision for the future of domestic elephants, that can't be a good thing for the present herd.

    So, sound business reasons aside, I don't feel too guilty for the over pampering, whatever your reasons for wanting elephants off the streets it makes conservation sense to ensure the people who you are asking to change their way of life are comfortable in the place you want them to be and, as every politician and Public Relations Officer knows, if you are going to preach your crazy ideas, it always helps to make sure your audience has a full belly and a few fun toys to play with.

Wild elephants in San Francisco? (a date for your West Coast diary)

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 04:12:00 GMT

For those of you with spare time on your hands in the Bay area tomorrow (12/12/09), I can highly recommend popping down to the San Francisco Silent Film Festival at 11.30 in the morning to catch "Chang: A drama of the wilderness".

    The movie is great not only for it's wild elephant scenes, at one point they destroy a village but as a historical document on two levels - firstly they filmed a wild elephant capture using the kraal method, something only catchable nowadays in darkest Myanmar (and happily so I might add) and secondly as a document of our attitudes towards nature, both in Thailand and in the West in 1927.

    The movie is without a doubt a miracle of film making given the technology available in those days shooting in what is an obviously wild jungle but I'm not sure a New York audience would stand in rapturous applause nowadays when a tiger is obviously shot live on the film or a wild baby elephant was dragged from a pit and tied to a house pillar.

    I reviewed the movie, and the mahouts' reactions, once before in these 'ere pages.
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Date

From December 12, 2009 11:30 AM
Until December 12, 2009 1:00 PM

Location

The Castro Theatre
429 Castro St
San Francisco, CA 94114

[map it!]

Info Line

1-800-838-3006

Website

http://www.silentfilm.org/

Contact

Silent Film Festival
833 Market St
Suite #812
San Francisco, CA 94103
415.777.4908
boxoffice@silentfilm.org

Sales have ended for this event. Tickets may still be available at the door.

Description

11:30 AM
CHANG: A DRAMA OF THE WILDERNESS
Produced and Directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack (USA, 1927)
Cast: Kru, Chantui, Nah, Ladah, Bimbo

Shot entirely in Siam (present-day Thailand), Schoedsack and Cooper's thrilling adventure is clearly the prototype for their later masterpiece KING KONG - and a spellbinding success in its own right. The publicity of the time touted a cast of 500 native hunters, 400 elephants, tigers, leopards, pythons, and other denizens of the wild! Chang is a simple story of one family's survival on their small farm on the edge of the jungle - a way of life that often pits them against forces of nature. The film was nominated (along with Murnau's SUNRISE and Vidor's THE CROWD) for "Artistic Quality of Production" at the first ever Academy Awards.

35mm print from Milestone Film & Video. Approximately 68 minutes.

Donald Sosin will accompany Chang on the piano with an original score.

Introduced by Merian C. Cooper biographer Mark Vaz.

Notes

Free admission for children under 12. No ticket necessary!

Just when you thought it was safe to play favourites (it turns out they exhibit relative quantity judgement)

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 01:24:00 GMT

If you come to my camp and ask me which is my favourite elephant I'll tell you that I don't have one, can't have one, and that they are all equal to me.  Apart from the fact that is an outright lie it seems to me to be a sensible policy, you don't get Bodo or Michel telling you which is their favourite department head, no-one ever asks Amp who is her favourite mahout - the difference between myself and the above mentioned professionals is, of course, that you only have to hang around in camp awhile and my obvious favouritism shines through.

    Favouritism to the point that I recently, pretending to be professional, challenged a journalist to an electronic guessing game and refused to divulge my favourite until he guessed it within about three e-mails (those flying Emirates Air this December can find this out for themselves as he went and printed - luckily though, I can rely safely assume none of the other potentially jealous girls and boys will get to read it as 1, we don't think they can read and 2, they are unlikely to find themselves in Emirates Business Class as I am too tight to pay for a ticket for their Christmas holidays, the ticket itself is OK, it is the excess baggage that gets me - packed trunk and all that).

    But we know from a thousand years of anecdotes that eles have a good memory and can hold a grudge as well as a candle. So at times like this when I've got a couple of bags of sunflower seeds in my office (I was in town yesterday buying stuff for an ele dung project when I saw them and couldn't resist) which I go out and feed to the eles a handful at a time, how careful do I need to be not to slip an extra handful to the eyelid flashing favourite of today?

    Well, according to a paper that has been sitting on my desktop for some time (Relative quantity judgment by Asian elephants by Naoko Irie-Sugimoto, Tessei Kobayashi, Takao Sato and Toshikazu Hasegawa) very.

    As you'd expect it, not wanting to give myself a headache, it was the relative quantity judgment bit of the title that had it gathering dust until I worked out what the phrase really meant and that, scientist being scientists, they couldn't really say 'counting'.

    Actually, and in fairness, not quite: R.Q.J. (as those of us in the know call it) doesn't necessarily mean counting, it just means the ability to look at too separate quantities and judge which is the greater - not quite the same thing. What our clever Japanese friends did was to fill two bowls with different amounts of bananas and allowed elephants to choose just one - the eles themselves unerringly (well statistically speaking) picked the fuller bowl, something that seems to make sense but apparently the behaviour was only previously seen in non-human apes and cotton top tamarins.

    Where elephants split away from other tested animals, apart from ourselves, was the way they coped with disparity and magnitude effects (again a phrase that the scientists felt, quite rightly, that they had to explain to me) - while the cleverer primates could quite easily tell the difference between a bowl with one piece of bait and one with six pieces, routinely choosing the fuller, it seems they had troubles choosing the better between a bowl of three and a bowl of four; elephants, it seems had no such worries.

    So far, so clever, elephants pick the fuller bowl of food and can weigh up the better between two options while realising the zero sum nature of the game - the other bowl gets taken away - instead of instinctively reaching for something just because it is food, further still they're better at making finer judgments than anything so far tested (on a par with human children).

    But, being scientists, Naoko-san and friends decided to push it a step further, what if instead of letting the elephants see the bait in both bowls they could only watch both bowls being loaded and then choose before they got to see what was in a bowl? Well, blow me away if elephants (albeit a different set of elephants - making this even more convincing) couldn't do that as well, they watched the hand movements, heard the thump as the bait hit the bottom of the bowl, remembered which number of noises corresponded to which bowls and then chose the bowl with the greater number of previously loaded bait.

    Sorry Roy, but this isn't trigger on stage stamping his foot, this is a not-so-hungry (but famously food obsessed) beast counting and remembering actions that they know can be associated with amounts of sweet stuff.

    The researchers concluded that the reason for this reasoning may be an ancient necessity to work out the size of an approaching herd, or an ability to count mateable females before signing allegiances, but who knows?

    They were also confused that while all eles (though they were pre-screened for willingness to take part) performed well in the experiments, one (with the auspicious initials T.R.) couldn't grasp the disparity factors and fell apart when the amounts in each bowl were both large and close to each other - well, I can hazard a guess on that one, we know not all eles are uniquely gifted or fussy when it comes food, so perhaps once you get past a certain point the greedier eles just figure "who cares? enough is enough".

    The failure of one tested elephant to worry about the difference between a bowl of 5 oranges and a bowl of 6 oranges notwithstanding it seems worryingly sure that the things are watching and they are counting, maybe not how many sunflower seeds in a handful (though who knows) but certainly how many handfuls and they're remembering. No way I can play favourite if they know I gave someone three handfuls and someone else only two, with humans, of course, I can make excuses for my actions, but with elephants - even if they understand, no-one has yet proven that they'll listen - it will have to be straight down the line equal treatment.

    Sorry Lynch, no more favours!

Is webcam wilderness still wild? (or is freedom just another word for nothing left to lose?)

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 01:20:00 GMT

Many years ago, in a land far, far away I was once, believe it or not, an English child and I still have vague memories of Sunday T.V. watching (in Black and White but more by license choice than necessity - I'm not that old), Rugby Special or Ski Sunday and then usually a programme with Dr David Attenborough somewhere exotic reporting on the natural order of things - the slow and the sleepy, eaten by the quick and the ferocious, the big and the close knit surviving through knowledge and memory - things lived and things died, it was (and is) tough out there: a dead young deer was the meal for the predator's cubs, a matriarch elephant, with a long life under her belt, died and made way for others, after a period where the herd hung around, the scavengers moved in and squabbled over the carcass.

    Red in tooth and claw as Lord Tennyson would have it, though, admittedly, in these Sunday night struggles, after the proscribed level of struggle the rains always came and life was once more renewed - but wasn't that the point of it all? (that this may no longer be happening is a tale for another time).

    This, and a trip to the zoo to see the slightly fatter, less naturally aware and intense versions of the animals was probably the closest average English folks got to wilderness and we lapped it up - when younger we wondered why the cameraman never stepped in to save the cute little deer, but we grew out of it when we learned that this is the way of things and to interfere on a gut reaction to solve the emotional problem in front of us, as history has told us time and time again, just pushes the negative consequence elsewhere - in the basest view, the predator's cubs die, the scavengers - part of the ecosystem - don't have enough to eat.

    Chaos theory will tell you every action has unseen consequences, I don't know why she swallowed the fly.

    Then slowly, the world got smaller, normal folks like you and I could find ways to go and see these things for real, Dr. Attenborough had to turn to expensive time lapse photography and widgetty cameras to stay ahead of the game and continue to amaze us while those that followed in his footsteps resorted to tabloid wildlife journalism with titles not out of place in a primary school yard argument, "WORLD'S DEADLIEST ANIMAL ENCOUNTERS", "Who Would Win in a Fight Between...." and, worse still in my book, if you weren't actually handling the creature you'd come to see or disturbing it in some way, then it just wasn't a bankable programme.

    The great wide open spaces, the endless jungles in which these dramas were once played out disappeared or, at best, shrank; human populations increased and cheap flights allowed normal folks like us to go and watch the drama for themselves - being humans we started to interfere, be it for our own progress (territories were split by roads, dams were built for power and irrigation) or for tourists (when droughts came naturally Park management pumped water to 'save the animals' largely at the request of their guests (but with half an eye on their budget); in a case recently a critically endangered Siamese crocodile was moved from a camp ground here in Thailand because it was scaring guests - not one word of dissent) somewhere along the way some folks changed the focus of the idea of National Parks - from preserved wilderness ecosystems in all their sweating, flying, biting, stinking, glorious ugliness flecked with seconds of beauty and views of the sublime to playgrounds to come and 'see what we saw on TV' (TV never expressly told you that their programmes were the result of years of mosquito bitten camouflaged camera work), naturally the focus falls on the charismatic megafauna and not on the mosquitoes, worms, ticks and leeches, in fact, say the visitors, if you can give us the charisma without the irritation we'd be a whole lot happier.

    So the temptation arrives to manage the wilderness, if people come to see elephants, we'll manage the area to show them elephants even if it is to the detriment - particularly with elephants - of pretty much all else in the eco-system, especially when you start to help them out, pumping in water in times of drought, growing fruit trees in the jungle - mostly done in Thailand in attempts to stop them coming crop raiding but also done in other countries in response to visitors' cries of 'how can you let them suffer' during the hard times.

    Is suffering to be regretted? I guess it must be, but it is also part of the natural order.

    Pumping water during a drought and negating the effects of other natural disasters that would regulate a population means they then fail to do so, in building a dam and knocking out the dry season delayed pregnancies are no longer delayed and the populations increase.

    Errrrm... hooray!?

    Well, yes, if you happen to be an elephant or a person who has come all this way to see elephants, and well, no if you happen to be a herbivore now in competition with the big guzzling things, or an ant that feeds on a particular sort of tree that is now driven to destruction by the increased ele population. An overpopulation of the charismatic mega fauna begins to develop inside the protected areas to match the overpopulation of humans outside....

    ...and then come the webcams, people love our animals and our park, let's pop a webcam so our fans can see what goes on in our wilderness environment - but the honest piece of naivety we show when we invite the globe into our homes via their desktop is that nowadays everyone is conservationally aware and educated and, well, it seems, everyone ain't.

    Apparently outrage was caused the other week when a park management somewhere in Africa failed to interfere with nature for the sake of just one beast, spotted in assumed pain on a webcam - though those that caused the outrage got their diagnosis wrong, the animal was not in pain through giving birth in her old age but through constipation bought about by not being able to properly chew food, eventually the animal died having successfully deposited her juvenile calf with the herd.

    Somewhere the line has been smudged between domestic animals, who we, having caused them to be born domesticated have duty to make as comfortable as possible (within the bounds of their species) and wild ecosystems which should be protected as a whole not just for the benefit of one species, let alone one beast.

    There are a great many advantages in being born free but the drawback is that you are part of an immense and complicated system that is not skewed in your favour - to me that the phrase "Elephant Dies of Old Age" makes a headline says it all.
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Elephant dies of old age (South Africa) News 24
October 5, 2009

Cape Town - The elephant cow that provoked an outcry from an animal rights group when it was spotted, apparently distressed and in pain, on an Mpumalanga game reserve's live webcam a fortnight ago, has died.

"The elephant cow died yesterday [Sunday] afternoon of natural causes, i.e. old age," Djuma Private Game Reserve owner Jurie Moolman told Sapa in an e-mail on Monday.

The cow, which last week managed to rejoin its herd, had been at the end of its natural life, with her last set of teeth worn to the point of not being able to chew her food.

Looking out for her calf

"She kept up with the herd, and it is difficult not to think that she had one last thing to do before she died - ensuring that her calf was accepted into the herd. Her calf is with the herd and seems to be doing well.

"Hopefully this is a lesson to us all about interfering; we should not, unless humans caused the suffering," Moolman said.

Djuma is one of more than a dozen lodges and reserves that make up the 65 000 hectare Sabi Sand Reserve, which shares an unfenced 50km border with the Kruger National Park.

On Monday last week, the group Animal Rights Africa demanded that the reserve's owners help the elephant.

According to the group, the elephant was suffering with what appeared to be birth complications.

The Sabi Sand Reserve has a "policy of non-intervention when it comes to animals in distress not caused by humans", but its ecological committee decided to take action in this case.

Could not chew food

When the animal was found by rangers, it was seen to be suffering from old age and constipation.

"It was determined that she is very old - so old that her teeth are too worn for her to masticate her food properly, and thus a bolus of unchewed food is blocking her alimentary canal," Moolman said at the time.

At one point there were plans to euthanise the elephant, but it was granted a reprieve when it rejoined its herd. It was closely monitored over the past week.

The cow - which has a three-year-old calf - was estimated to be between 50 and 60 years of age, an advanced age for an elephant.

Moolman reported the calf was no longer suckling and should have no problems surviving without its mother.
African elephants, the world's largest land mammals, die more often of starvation than old age.

They go through five sets of teeth in their lives, but once these are gone - worn away by the up to 250kg of bark, leaves and twigs an adult elephant chews its way through in a day - they are no longer able to eat.

มงกุฎแสงจันทร์ (high drama on ele back - try typing that into TIVO)

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:29:00 GMT

Residents of Thailand will know of the joys of Thai terrestrial TV, sitting P'Dai's noodle shop over a spicy ma-ma heang and a cold kwat of Leo of an evening you can watch the news followed by a programme that will update you on the deeds of the Royal Family during the day - there's often an elephant either in the news (something tragic that may have happened) or in the Royal news (if one of their Royal Highnesses visited one of their elephant Foundations).

    After that and a small, often humorous - though nowadays more about convincing Thai ladies that they are ugly with their olive skin and dark, smooth hair - advert break you settle in, a long (long - seriously long) theme tune (which usually gives the game away for the next fifteen weeks of story) and then two hours of high drama - clean cut heroes; bad guys with mustaches, long hair and comedically stupid henchmen; gentle elderly patriarchs; scheming matriarchs; a whiter than white, usually rich but pretending to be poor heroine (who always starts off hating the clean cut hero but ends up rather differently), who sometimes carries a very big gun and knows some form of karate, never sweats and wears full make-up even when sleeping rough in the jungle; a scheming older sister/evil friend; a comedy maid or gardener (always played by the same actor who must be legally obliged to be cast in all Thai made TV and movies) who speaks best fluent Lao in a Bangkok accent and to top it all there is quite often some time travel thrown in.

    Thai drama at its best, all acted as though for a stage audience and in crystal clear Bangkok Thai. It is not necessarily the best pointer for a young foreigner trying to find his way in the country (argue with the best looking girl until she falls in love with you, avoid men with moustaches, always listen to the old guy and don't follow the old lady - unless she's poor, or at least pretending to be) but it is a good way to practice the sort of Thai to use when you have to go for meetings in Bangkok.

    ...and what more reason do you need to sit down and watch? Either on television for those of you who live here or they even stream it through the internet nowadays for those of you not-so-lucky.

    Well, here's one more reason, last year, before the flood, we were approached by a production company needing elephants, long sticks and a bit expertise to film one such drama - set in a foreign land, sometime in the past, where elephant polo is played by princely folk.

...lights, camera...

...someone famous throughout Thailand and an actor...

...the elephants appear to be enjoying the action, the mahouts are wondering if this acting lark is all it is cracked up to be...

...and even more action.

    Oh, almost forgot, the point of the piece, the show in question มงกุฎแสงจันทร์ (Mongkut Saengjan) begins airing today on Thai TV Channel three at the drama time of 20:30 - the official page (including a trailer - with a trunk! - and some fan cards to send to friends) is available here.

G'day Mate (an Aussie V.C.R. date)

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 08:56:00 GMT

...before she appealed to us to come and live here Pumpui's Mum, K. Varunee, was part of the one of the extended families whose elephants were chosen to go to Taronga Zoo in Sydney, being the most photogenic she was chosen to take part in a story culminating in the birth of Luk Chai - the first ele to be born in Sydney from Artificial Insemination.

We didn't know where she'd gone until one of the keepers called to say they'd seen her rock up in Sydney.

The T.V. show is airing in the city on Saturday, so, for fans of K. Varunee, K. Pom and Tony, Pumpui & Chok (all of whom stayed behind when she took to the big city) don't forget to grab a stubby, pop a shrimp on the barbie, slip off your thongs, slap a Pom and root for (erm... no, sorry, that's English, I mean support) K. Varunee...
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Getting ready for a special zoo TV event this Sunday, 6.30pm on Channel 7
Australia's biggest baby is growing up fast. This Sunday night at 6.30pm, a one-hour television special tracks the incredible full story of the journey that delivered Australia's first elephant calf, Luk Chai, at Taronga Zoo.

Sunday 6 December
Channel 7
6.30pm

See a preview (including Varunee) here

...because 40 years just fly by. (June and Garry's vow renewal in camp)

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 01:12:00 GMT

It is well known that we need no real excuse for a party here in the Elephant Camp but occasionally some folks come along with the perfect excuse nonetheless.

    So it is with many times repeat guest June 'the rain Queen' Billings - so called because she has the uncanny knack of bringing rain from the bluest skies and the driest of dry seasons (we're thinking of sending her to Desert Islands or the new Anantara up there in the empty quarter just to give her a real challenge) - she is, of course, also part parent of Tawan, the little big fella that we bought out of hospital in Surin in the days before we learned that buying elephants only put other elephants in danger (in fact, it is his ex-owner that taught us this, converting the money we give him plus some insurance into two new baby elephants for the streets), elephant polo lines-lady and holder of other accolades too numerous to mention here.

    Having been married to Garry 'the sun king' Billings for forty years and accompanied by him on several of her elephant expeditions June contacted us some time ago to request a surprise party to celebrate this and we thought, where better than the elephant camp? We're not very good at keeping secrets but, well, we'll try.

    The morning started with a seven monk and food offering blessing with all the Anantara department heads...

...followed by a little rest to absorb the merit and put the eles to bed before things really got started in the evening, we invited a local village Brahman in to give a baisri (บายศรี) ceremony (which, unfortunately I failed to get photos of) and then let the mahouts, hotel staff and children enjoy a good, old fashioned, elephant camp party...

...food was moo katar buffet, a kind of Northern Thai Korean barbeque thing, cooked over hot coals...

...we pulled up the rugs (well the new 'hybrid' silks - traditional Surin design with more modern plain scarves - sorry, little advert for the ladies' business)...

...as ever in the ele camp the kids are invited too...

...OK, OK, not so old fashioned, the old songs now come through the computer, complete with word prompts karaoke style, 21st century mahouts...

...kom loys (โคมลอย) to bring 40 more years of good luck...

...then let the dancing begin...

...into the night...

...as it was such a special occasion and the Billings' had treated us to this party, we flew in a Swiss T.V. Superstar and anchor lady just for one song.

You give what? to who? for why? (or why we support the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre).

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 02:43:00 GMT

One of the questions that I am most frequently asked, a question that has me scratching my head, is "You do a great job here, does the Government give you any funding?". I cough a little and furrow my brow, say thanks for the compliment but never really understand why the Government would fund a private enterprise, or even a Thai registered foundation - yes, our goals may be broadly similar but I've never heard of Governments financially supporting N.G.O's.

    In fact, in our case, through the King's Cup Elephant Polo tournament held each year, it is often the other way around - but when I say as much it is the turn of my friendly guest or journalist to furrow their brow and ask why a struggling little enterprise which (by the dirt 'neath my nails and the holes in my jeans) is obviously working from month to month just to keep our eles and mahouts in the style to which they've become accustomed. Why would we be giving that hard earned cash (& don't believe anyone who tells you that just because most of the money is donated in a charity auction it is not hard earned, not only is a charitable auction incredibly hard to organise, it is not unfair to say that to get those donors into that position takes the entire management staff of the hotel plus a few die-hard outside supporters three to six month's dedicated work along with the investment of millions of baht - not to mention the organisation of twenty elephants off the streets and just a little sweat from my aging limbs) to a Government institution?

    Well, the initial answer to that is easy, it is our stated intention to help all the elephants in Thailand and we believe that, as well as looking after our few in such a way as to set up a blue-print that can be copied elsewhere, the Government, in particular the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre (in the North) are in an incredible position to do that.

    But then people go and visit, scratch the surface a little bit, slide between the gates and go to Lampang and what do they find? Well, on initial inspection, they see a largely commercial operation with an entrance fee, an elephant show, everything for sale all the time - it looks just like all the other elephant camps in Thailand, they're all businesses, why would this be any different?

    Well, two reasons...

    The first will be familiar, in a way far deeper than we have ever tried here, the T.E.C.C. have recognised that Thai elephants, if they are to survive in domesticity will have to make money in order to keep themselves fed and have dedicated themselves to finding safe, sustainable ways of doing this that will appeal to all markets; remember all the alternatives to 'elephant trekking' you've heard about from camps with different P.R. approaches or seen on the internet? You can probably bet they originated at the T.E.C.C. - our very own mahout training course started with them, the first folks to do it; elephant dung paper? yep, first in the world; elephant painting? years before that video went viral you could buy conceptual art from the budding pachyderm Piccassos of Lampang; elephant orchestra? well, not many people doing that yet but still they've featured on some high powered movie scores and have three CD's under their belt - just about any idea you can think of that is now seen with a 'wow' on the internet or a blog, if it safe for elephants and can earn a mahout (or a business) extra money giving the ele an extra hour off, it was probably pioneered and trialled at the T.E.C.C. It may have been tuned and tweaked elsewhere but the idea was probably from there.

    The second reason, the stuff you don't see - the hospital is pretty visible and gives free care to any Thai elephant but you don't see the research that goes on; the mobile veterinary clinic that will come to any elephant that is not in need of hospital treatment but still needs a vet; you don't see the musth control team that can come out at the drop of a hat, free of charge, highly trained, highly skilled crack mahouts who'll come and sedate your out of control musth bull (eh Phu Khi!) who would, in previous years, been in danger not only of hurting folks but of catching a bullet rather than a dart of sedative; it is possible to miss the Elephant and Mahout Training college which researches and offers new elephant training methods away from the brutal ones practiced in the old days, teaches new mahouts and old hands new ways of looking after the elephants; unless you sweep the internet you don't get to see the publications in Thai and in English that come out of the T.E.C.C's typewriters on elephant care, history and everything in between and finally (but not comprehensively, these are just the things I can think of from the top of my head and there's plenty that I don't know about), the thing that gave us the idea to come down here and write this blog, the Pang La Sanctuary for disabled, elderly and dangerous elephants - operating quietly for over 30 years now without an official opening or any way of turning a dime.

    All of this extra stuff costs money over and above keeping and feeding the eighty odd elephants under their care and this is why, when the management system have a project that needs supporting - we're currently working with their Thai Elephant Therapy Project to train already domesticated Thai elephants (preferably ex-street eles) to work with Autistic children they can come to us and to the King's Cup Elephant Polo with a proposal for equipment or for specific funding and, if we can see it will be good for all Thai eles in the long run, there's a good chance we'll put our noses to the grindstone and try to raise some cash, and over the years, with the help of our sponsors, we haven't done badly...

...over the last few weeks we've had reason to visit a few times and a few facilities, so I thought I'd take a few photos of the more visible things the King's Cup has given in order to help this work.

Mahout housing at the hospital, so not only can elephants come and get free care, the mahouts can now stay with their eles.

...a few years ago we scraped together enough shekels for three pick-ups, now seen moving staff and fodder between the Lampang sites...

...the dedicated elephant ambulance travels all over the country to help sick elephants come to the centre and can also double as purely a well designed elephant transport truck.

...and with the money from the 2009 tournament we've agreed to help the Thai Elephant Therapy Project, five elephants have been off the streets and under training at the T.E.C.C. for three months already, the research is due to begin in earnest next March.

Electric Eleland (are you experienced?)

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:54:00 GMT

It is a peculiarity of life, I've found, that no matter when you start a project - if it is a project worth starting - it will be finished at exactly the moment that you no longer need to use it: the baby elephant camp was finished at the beginning of last dry season, the office roof was finally fixed on the day the rains stopped, the solar showers for the mahouts were finally installed just as the idea of hot water made everyone sweatier and smellier, I have no doubts that my elephant dung solid fuel machines will finally see the light of day at about the same time this year - but that's the wonderful thing about being weather obsessed, seasons always, always, always come around again (well, they used to anyway).

So it is with the much touted electric fence for our babies, the Mark III is ready to be launched on an unsuspecting ele public at just the time the fish are gasping for air and finding ready friends in the egrets' beaks down on the grassland.

Luckily we always have half an eye on the bigger picture, the Mark III in this case, was never really designed just for our little valley - yes it will give a few eles a chance to run around, cause chaos and create unwanted wallows when our grassland floods again, as it surely will; but the plan has always been to finalise a design on this relatively small scale that could be extended around a larger plot of land, wherever, whenever, whoever this becomes possible.

As with all these things, the electric fence idea is, of course, not ours but the designs we borrowed from downloaded internet photos, mobile phone sneaky spy shots and our visit to Her Majesty's Royal Re-introduction Project didn't seem to fit our rambunctious but obviously fairly tame young 'uns - so Mark's I & II fell by the wayside in a pile of not even barely worried buffalo (signal too weak - wire too thick) and St Vitus' dancing mahouts (hmmm.... bit too strong that one - you didn't think we'd actually test it on eles did you?).

Once we had the jolt level to our satisfaction Lynchee and I went in, I with bated breath - how would she react? would the first jolt send her panicking through the fence the other side? would she hate me forever? - she with glorious ignorance - mmmm... green grass to eat; tyres, people to play with.

Unfortunately I was actually so concerned (once more my scientific credentials go flying out the window) that I needed to be there to help her cope with the consequences of the first shock that I don't have a video or photo of the momentous occasion when she backed up a couple of inches, made no noise at all and came to the conclusion not to touch the blue rope again before going on with the grazing and the playing. In short the electric fence worked just as it should - other eles were not quite so quick to realise (but then I'm biased as to the brightness of our Lynch') but they got it in the end.

...after a quick (but largely unnecessary) verbal lesson in how to use it...

...it is down to some serious playing.

The trick now will be persuading the mahouts to let their eles use it, unlike classic cattle and horse herding countries the electric fence is not a common method of stock control here in Thailand and we do make a point of listening to our mahouts' concerns - they started with 'the elephant will surely die it is lethal, you're completely crazy' which is an easy one to disprove having built and demonstrated the thing whilst maintaining a couple of very much alive eles - now we're on a slightly trickier belief that their babies will be sent sterile.

Hey, ho, another day, another challenge in our mahout friendly, rescue rental world.

But we have a long time to win them around because, as alluded to at the very beginning of the missive, the project is finished just at the time we don't really need it - the grassland's dry and the babies are daily out running around in the tall grass with perhaps, just perhaps, a little splashing thrown in.

Lazy review of Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers (using selected evidence from the book to back up my traditional rants)

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:44:00 GMT

One of the problems of the blogosphere is that one can select and publish only the information that agrees with our world view, the medium removes the burden of proof, I could put up the most preposterous of opinions, presenting them as facts and, though they may be based on the scantest of evidence, you Dear Reader, would have no recourse save for an acerbic comment which I could then choose whether or not to send public.

So, being prone to this sort of behaviour myself, it is a great relief when some clever and rigorous folks - otherwise known as scientists - go to the trouble of producing a work that appears to back up the more spurious of the rants I subject you to.

The chapter on water usage had me almost punching the air with joy, apart from the fact it was lucid, well written and researched, it could have been lifted from one of my pieces (though as the book was finished in 2003 or so and I have only just read it now we must have just come to the same conclusion). That the yearly claims of drought have more to do with an increasing population and an increased expectation of year round cropping (using irrigation during the dry season) throughout the area (the book makes distinction between upland farmers who normally take the blame and lowland farmers who are the traditional blamers - not being tuned into the narratives I have never made that distinction) without a corresponding increase in water collection infrastructure.

The rainfall graphs taken from the Royal Irrigation Department website manage to show that rainfall levels, though definitely fluctuating over the last 40 years, are (so far) fluctuating within natural, historical levels in much the same way as my favourite graph of flood and flow from the Mekong River Commission has (thus far) managed to show that even our great flood events and drought claims are well within the natural fluctuations of recent history and have more to do with an increased expectation to be able to farm/trade year round - something never dreamt of in the past.

But enough of the agreements and the 'I told you so's' what did I learn? Well, in truth I learned a lot about the historical politics that have informed traditional Government intervention in this landscape - I had never assumed the monocrop large teak plantations were anything more than long term cash cropping though they were, apparently, an attempt to preserve rainfall levels under the belief that trees create rain; learned a great deal of the issues between lowland and upland farmers and became enlightened as to the land designations and, in particular, the intricacies of running elephants on certain types of land, if you like, the official definition of conservation.

I was also quite disturbed to learn that perhaps the most accurate method of estimating historical erosion patterns is to calculate the relative levels of cesium-137 left over from the atomic bomb testing age (peaking in 1963) in the soil. This is radioactive stuff dropped from the atmosphere uniformly across the world in those days.

The only chapter on which I would take issue, and in relying on observational and anecdotal evidence to do so I become that which I seek to criticise, is the chapter on biodiversity. In doing so I make no distinction between upland and lowland farmers and between the methods traditionally used by different peoples, I buy into the arguments that certain sorts of swidden agriculture - both pioneer and otherwise (though, being a fan of big trees and of natural environments, I don't really like the idea of pioneer swidden - i.e. moving a village and cutting down virgin forest in order grow crops rather than having rotating areas of secondary forest left fallow for a certain number of years around a fixed village - though what is done is done and, what the book doesn't mention is that most of the big trees were presumably (up until Government intervention put a stop to it in 1989) taken by large logging companies and our favourite mammals which, I presume, would have produced a far greater effect on the virgin forest than any amount of either type of swidden).

This chapter seeks, I feel, to suggest that large populations and commercial, year round, farming - be it of fruit, rubber or other trees, may not harm the biodiversity of the region - having walked in areas ranging from protected National Park (mainly areas of tertiary growth) where hunting and grazing are controlled, through secondary growth forest away from villages, swidden farming areas and into pesticide ridden fruit farms and 'intensive' agricultural areas I can vouch, observationally, that the diversity of mammal life (with wild mammals being virtually without trace outside specifically (and actually) protected areas) and of bird life (from calls and observation) decreases as you walk through - with the large, fruit and rubber forests, being void of any faunal life at all.

For floral life you would have to ask a horticulturalist, but the (seemingly universal) habit of using pesticide to clear weeds around any plantation or area that needs cleaning cannot be good for plant diversity - in fairness the book only specifically challenges the oft made claim that pesticide use pollutes downstream waterways and, for this, I have to bow to higher knowledge - but it ain't that good for the plants it falls on, whether those plants be in the mountains or on the plains.

In summation, this is not a book you would necessarily read unless you were specifically interested in the subject, either here or elsewhere in S.E. Asia - it may hold many lessons for those working in countries where the economic miracle of Thailand has not yet happened and, at times, it does read more of a direct questioning of Government policy and a defence of the upland 'hill tribe' farmers and farming techniques than a truly balanced scientific laying out of all research in the field.

That said, the historical tendency to blame all of the agricultural and environmental ills on specific groups of upland farmers, whilst praising other groups and completely ignoring the effects of others still - when all are operating, increasingly, in the same area must be very frustrating for those who take all the blame and those who have researched to prove that this 100% share is unwarranted.

As with so much else in life, for those of you who prefer your reading slightly less scientifically rigorous the situation can be summed up as "it's not as simple as it looks and don't believe everything you read in the papers (or the blogosphere)".

Bit like elephants really.
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Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers (the politics of environmental knowledge in Northern Thailand)
by Tim Forsyth and Andrew Walker is available from all good local bookstores as well as international websites.

What's big and grey and has a long nose?

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:07:00 GMT

Any guesses? No, no, no, not that, would I insult your intelligence by not posing a trick question?

Hint: It doesn't really have a long nose (apart from allegedly providing room for those that are inclined to develop one a la Pinocchio, but that is, quite literally, a stretch).

No, it is the area in which the current wildlife laws and CITES regulations allow us to register our elephants in order to earn the moniker 'Captive Bred'. In fact, that's not quite true, the CITES regulation (10.16 rev.) is very clear, for an elephant to be defined as captive bred (C) both her parents must be classified at least F1 - i.e. have been bred in captivity in a controlled manner. What is unsaid is all four of the grandparent parents, presumably, could have been wild caught - something that makes sense as, given the life span and reproductive tendencies of an elephant we would have to be going back 24 years at the very minimum for those four grandparent elephants, to have been caught - yes, it would have been illegal to have caught them in 1985 but if we were to suggest that grandparents and then parents were 30 years old when they bred we are well back into the times when wild capture was not only legal but commonplace.

Even in 1985, however, the world was a very different place, Thailand was a very, very different place, the laws for elephant registration are as old as the hills and, indeed, take into account that Thailand - particularly those bits in which elephants hang out - is a particularly hilly (or swampy if we talk of Surin) place.

Once a baby is born you have eight years to register it, by which time it will have been separated from it's mother for five years and, as with wild elephants, the father has but one job, usually accomplished with relish and gusto, and he's out of the picture - one act of penetration performed nearly 10 years before the latest legal registration date of his calf, following which he may not have been seen again. So, on a village scale, we have the mahout's and perhaps the village elder's word that the elephant came from two specific parent elephants (who may no longer be in the area) - scientifically this isn't of much use as, outside the big logging companies, formal records were not taken and the registration system has no legal requirement to mention the parents of an elephant and place of breeding (i.e. to confirm it was a controlled environment).

I think I have mentioned this before, when we began registering our elephants with an international database, the collator automatically recorded them as wild caught (turns out a lot of people outside Thailand seem to think that we just pop into the jungle and grab an ele every time we need one - partially, one suspects, because of this grey area in scientific designation and near impossibility of registering any of our elephants as Captive Bred under the CITES definition.) but what got me reading deeper was a recently published report by the international agency Traffic entitled The Elephant and Ivory Trade in Thailand which appears to be a well researched (except some data is out of date - number of domestic elephant camps stemming from 2002, price of baby elephants must be from about the same time) document focusing mainly on the ivory trade but obviously spending time at the border and making use of the research from an earlier study focusing on Myanmar that we have previously discussed.

Interestingly the first study (and I consider both of them valid) resulted in vibrant headlines in the popular press identifying Myanmar as the centre of the illegal trade in wildlife in South East Asia, whereas this study, some of the same journals and journalists now identify Thailand as the centre of that trade with headlines such as Thai Corruption, Loopholes, & Adventure Travel Enable Illegal Ivory Trade - lucky Burma to be off the hook so quickly. The reality of the situation is, of course, that it is a cross border trade (at least for live eles) and that until both countries live up to their obligations under CITES (Thailand signed in 1983, Myanmar in 1997) then the trade will continue - though, as I have said before, the trade is older than the effective enforcement of the borders so the elephant keepers living on both sides of the border can be understood when they fail to see what the fuss is about.

That Adventure Travel either deliberately (though I would be tempted to place that burden on the less adventurous tourism ventures) or unwittingly (through my old favourite soap box subject of the 'smuggle to Bangkok to sell to well meaning 'rescue' operations' trade) drives the trade in live elephants is something that it is not beyond imagination, I do find it slightly unfair to blame us for the trade in ivory though: I don't think any camp I've ever visited sells ivory (at least openly and to the public) - if anyone has seen it for sale in a camp I would like to know, Traffic's under cover folks may know more.

In fairness to Thailand the report made several recommendations and those that can be practically and easily followed have been; leading to some high profile ivory seizures, increased training of border post officials and customs folks etc. I think it is also fair to say that the tourist industry is aware of the problems and, as ever, change can be market driven; as tourists I highly recommend that you ask the camp you choose to travel to (or ask your agent to ask) how they source their elephants and what they do to safeguard against using illegally smuggled, wild caught, elephants.

Other recommendations such as the legal registration and microchipping of baby elephants at birth (or let's say within three months) and a national computer database have not yet been implemented but are worth campaigning for as it is very difficult to see any legal arguments for not doing this given Thailand's excellent infrastructure and communications system - let us hope for a change in the law in the near future.
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Thailand steps up efforts to tackle illegal ivory trade

TRAFFIC press release

September 24, 2009



Bangkok, Thailand, 24 September-A recent high-profile ivory seizure, a review of national legislation, and the initiation of training courses for both government staff and ivory traders are indications of the commitment being shown by the Thai Government to tackle the illegal ivory trade, according to TRAFFIC.

The seizure, by the Royal Thai Customs Department, took place during the third week of August at the Suvarnabhumi International Airport, when, according to the Thailand CITES Management Authority, 316 pieces of raw ivory weighing 812.5 kg illegally imported from Qatar were confiscated.

In order to help track the domestic ivory trade in Thailand, in August last year the Government introduced legislation requiring ivory traders to maintain and updated inventory their stock and to have this available for review by authorities as required.

The Government is also beginning a review of the Wildlife Animal Reservation and Protection Act (WARPA 1992). The Act contains a loophole that allows illegal trade to flourish in the country.

The flaw in the legislation was highlighted in TRAFFIC's recent report, The elephant and ivory trade in Thailand (PDF, 800 KB) which also detailed the results of market surveys for ivory carried out in 2006 and 2007: http://www.traffic.org/species-reports/traffic_species_mammals50.pdf

"The government of Thailand is clearly demonstrating its commitment to addressing the illegal trade in ivory, although there is a long way to go before satisfactory measures are in place," says Chris RShepherd, Acting Director of TRAFFIC Southeast Asia.

Recently the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) initiated a series of training courses to raise awareness among its staff about Thailand's obligations under existing national legislation and under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) to control and manage ivory trade.

Thailand became a Party to CITES in 1983.



The first course was organized in Nakorn Sawan Province, and to help ensure buy-in from the private sector, ivory traders were invited to participate. TRAFFIC was invited to run a session on the identification of ivory for DNP staff.

"It was very encouraging to see the enthusiasm of the participants, and to see that more than 80% of the ivory and substitute ivory products used to test DNP staff were identified correctly," says Shepherd.

The second course in Sara Buri Province was a three day event aimed at raising awareness among enforcement agencies about Thailand's obligations under CITES and the importance of developing an effective coordination mechanism to report ivory seizures. A session was also included to help enforcement officers distinguish between real and fake ivory (usually bone and plastic resins) and between elephant (CITES listed) and mammoth ivory (non CITES listed).

TRAFFIC, in collaboration with the CITES Secretariat, has developed the Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS), a database that collates information on all ivory seizures reported worldwide.

Analysis of ETIS records helps in the assessment of how elephant range States are fulfilling theircommitment under the Convention, and has consistently identified Thailand as one of the top five countries implicated in the illegal trade of ivory.

Among countries in the region, Thailand plays the most significant role in the illegal trade in ivory and other elephant products, with trade in live elephants also a serious issue.

Although the trade in ivory and elephant products is not a new phenomenon-in Thailand, records go back as far the Sukhothai period (1238-1376 A.D.) - Asian Elephants are declining across their range, 
with the illegal trade in ivory a major contributing factor.



TRAFFIC has offered to provide technical support to help Thailand fulfill its obligations under CITES, ETIS and in the enforcement of strengthened national legislation.

Thailand is one of the 175 Parties expected to attend the next full meeting of CITES, which takes place next March in Qatar where concern about the trade in ivory and other elephant products will once again feature on the agenda.

"The seizure by Thai Customs of more than 800 kg of ivory illegally imported from Qatar last month could hardly be of greater significance for Thailand to signal its international commitment to implementing the treaty fully," says Shepherd.

Elephant caravan - a mixed message or a dream journey?

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 04:23:00 GMT

Recently, with a great deal of ceremony but with oddly low-key, given the organisations involved and the message, press coverage Greenpeace took five elephants back to the streets - they're calling it a Chang(e) Caravan, the Chang bit being elephant in Thai (ช่าง) and the e, apparently standing for 'empowerment' but I think probably poetic license to justify the pun (something I am prone to myself).

Their plan is to march them through the lowlands of Thailand for a fortnight to bring attention to climate change and to the threats that rising temperatures and sea levels would have on Thailand's rice bowl - most of which sits a hair's breadth above sea level - and on biodiversity in general, the aim is to finish in Samut Prakarn in time for the United Nations Climate Change Negotiations - otherwise known as the Bangkok Climate Change Talks 2009 (which start tomorrow, 28th of September).

I have to admit my first thought was not one of outrage, though there is definitely a mixed message in there, here we are working to get eles off the streets and here Greenpeace are takin' 'em back.

I heard a young Dutch lady a few years ago attempted to do a similar thing, walk an ele she had bought from the streets back through Thailand, performing educational work along the way, to a Sanctuary in the North (I think Elephant Nature Park). Rumour has it that her donors and the overseas elephant loving folks were so appalled at this idea that she had to call it off - we're saving an ele from the streets, how can you suggest that it walk some more?

My first thought, though, centred around a green-eyed monster - if I could find someone else to take over the reins of keeping my 34 elephantine and 64 human souls happy, busy and healthy for awhile (and persuade my bosses to keep on paying me) I have long dreamed of an elephant pace journey through the back roads of Thailand, from Surin to here over the course of about three or four months, I think the kindnesses and insights into Thai life that you get at that pace (I always love riding the elephants back from Chiang Saen after Songkran) would be selfishly worth it as a lifetime experience, if you also performed educational work in local schools as well as told the international press that you were doing it to 'draw attention to something' (more for form's sake than to draw attention to it one feels), who knows, given a further six months of hair pulling and wrist ache there may be a best seller in it too.

So, mixed messages aside, I feel it would be churlish to complain about our climate change activist friends taking eles back to the streets, they are also quick to point out that the eles will only walk 10km a day and will be transported by truck through the busy areas, something that I guess is necessary if you need to cover that distance in that time. I guess some folks might point out that popping elephants on and off trucks and sending them out on the road is a little unnecessary, there are other ways to make a point and the eles may be happier in the forest but, done well as I'm sure Dr Alongkot will, and using Surin elephants that are used to trucks, it is still better than scraping a living on the streets from whence they came and if attention really is drawn (I think the benefit to the schools and towns they visit will be greater than to the folks in the U.N. conference centre who are presumably well versed in the issues) then the greater good is satisfied (and it all sounds like jolly good fun).

The caravan is obviously having some effect as climate change stories are popping up in the press - and I'm not going to argue that this is not a pre-eminent issue facing our planet - as I will not argue that (should we fail to prevent it) it will directly harm the bio-diversity of the entire planet (as well as the Greater Mekong Sub-region) but being an old and unreformable pedant I do have to make the small point that, in my opinion, the greater immediate threat to the bio-diversity of the areas mentioned is continued habitat loss through human intervention and encroachment, unsustainable water usage as well as, in some cases poaching for the pet and bushmeat markets.

Climate change will obviously increase these problems over the next ten to twenty to fifty to one hundred years, but, by then, many of the 133 - 2,835 species (now there's a fair old data range) may be extirpated or extinct already thanks to current destructive trends unconnected to the major global issue. I haven't seen the educational material that accompanies the caravan but I do hope they stress the importance of saving Asia's wild places now as well as the household level changes that can be made to help change the larger picture.

On a smaller point, while I find the assertion that there is no viable population of Asian elephant remaining in the range states a little alarmist - the scientific agreement on what constitutes a viable gene pool is a long way off (under the most rigorous scientific definition we'd all be doomed) - I agree that concentration on wildlife corridors and linking the remaining populations in Thailand and throughout the range is necessary - these were listed as recommendations in the 1996 Asian Elephant Conservation Action Plan - perhaps a caravan to highlight the need for this work is in order?

...and while I wouldn't argue that Khao Yai at 300 has possibly Thailand's highest density of elephants it also wouldn't hurt to make the point that Thailand has some other populations with greater viability (at present) due to access to greater areas of contiguous forest and of being on the border with countries with a lower human population density and potentially very large areas of forest remaining (albeit with very little current protection).
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The Future Depends on What We Do at the Present (Greenpeace South-east Asia blog)

Om Jai Shri Ganesha! As is the practice amongst millions of believers, especially the Hindus, the blessings of the elephant-headed god, aka Ganapati, the remover of obstacles and god of all beginnings, were sought today to launch the Chang(e) Caravan near the famed UNESCO world heritage site, the magnificent rainforests of Khao Yai National Park.

Later, sitting amongst hundreds of school children, watching the ancient ceremony of Wai Pakam, being performed by mahout elders of the Kui tribe, calling upon the spirits for protection of all life in the forests, I was amazed by the simple animist beliefs that have persisted despite the disappearance of the forests , thousands of species and the traditional way of life.

Before the arrival of man, Southeast Asia, a region that today comprises of 11 nations and is about half the size of USA, was completely covered by forests with the exception of its beaches, tidal flats and top of some high mountains.

More than 100 plant families with several thousand tree species thrived in these forests that one time, according to naturalists, was home to over 50 percent of all species on earth.

Only a few patches have survived the onslaught of man and his greed, but I was reassured by my friend, Dr. Alongkot, a leading elephant conservationist in Thailand and Caravan Manager of the audacious Chang(e) caravan, that these remaining rain forests of Southeast Asia are still a refuge to almost 20 percent of surviving bio-diversity on the planet

Chang, Thai for Elephant, the most charismatic mega-fauna, its largest member. All of which is under unprecedented threat with the dual and inter-related cause of deforestation and climate change.

The Asian Elephant, is divided in 3 sub-species, the elephants of Sri Lanka (Elephas maximus maximus), the Sumatran elephant (Elephas maximus Sumatranus) and all the elephants of the continental mainland (Elephas maximus Indicus).

According to Dr. Alongkot , nowhere in India or Southeast Asia there exists, what biologists call a ‘minimal viable population' that can breed in perpetuity without harmful genetics efforts caused by ‘pocketed herd phenomenon' due to forest degradation and loss of forest corridors.

Thailand has about 1500 wild elephants with the biggest concentration (200-300) in Khao Yai National Park and along the border with Myanmar. Thailand presently has about 2500 elephants in captivity. With the closure of logging industry , many of these elephants and their mahout families have been rendered jobless, reduced to begging on the streets of Bangkok.

Five such elephants, rescued and rehabilitated by Thai Elephant Research and Conservation Fund, will lead the people's caravan for change, raising awareness on climate change, collecting and broadcasting the voices of thousands of impacted people in the region to call upon world leaders especially President Obama to take decisive action to combat climate change and stop deforestation.

Von Hernandez, Greenpeace Southeast Asia's Executive Director, in his opening remarks said that the letter ‘e' in chang(e), stands for ‘empowerment'. Given the elephantine task ahead for the Chang(e) caravan crew and also the world leaders who will meet in New York for a special session of UN general assembly on climate change, we hope that the wisdom of the elephants will prevail.

After all, to quote Mahatma Gandhi, "The future depends on what we do in the present."
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Mekong countries told they must work out plan to adapt

: Writer: Apinya WMekong nations have been urged to work out a regional plan for adapting to climate change to safeguard the region's ecological system from rising temperatures.ipatayotin; Position: Reporter; Published: 26/09/2009 at 12:00 AM; Newspaper section: News

This photo taken on Jan 1, 2008, and released by The World Wide Fund for Nature shows a Khorat big-mouthed frog,known by its scientificname Limnonectes megastomias, at an unknown location in Thailand.Thefanged frog wasamong163new species discovered last year in the biologicallyrich GreaterMekong region, anenvironmental group said yesterday. AP

A lack of concrete measures to combat climate change has put many species of rare fauna and flora in the Mekong region at risk of extinction, Stuart Chapman, director of the WWF Greater Mekong Programme, said yesterday.

He proposed the Mekong Regional Climate Change Adaptation Agreement be drafted and signed by Mekong region nations to ensure cooperation in combating climate change and protecting the region from its devastating impacts.

The recommendation came after the WWF's survey of animals and plant species along the Mekong river last year found 163 new species in the region _ 100 plants, 28 fish, 18 reptiles, 14 amphibians, two mammals and a bird.

But all of them are at risk of extinction due to the impacts of climate change.

The new species were found in the Greater Mekong region, covering Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam and the southern part of China.

Mr Chapman said closer cooperation among Mekong countries in fighting and adapting to climate change should be discussed at the Bangkok Climate Change Talks 2009, which start on Monday.

Geoff Blate, the WWF's climate change coordinator for the Greater Mekong programme, said that recent studies show the climate of the Greater Mekong region is already changing.

Moreover, rising seas and salt water intrusion will cause major coastal effects on the Mekong River delta, which is one of the three most vulnerable deltas in the world. An average rise in temperature in the region of two to four degrees Celsius would lead to the extinction of 133 to 2,835 species, he said.

"We have many cooperation agreements on the economy and energy, but none for the crucial issue of climate change," said Mr Blate.

Kathrin Gutmann, of the WWF Global Climate Initiative, expressed her hope that climate change talks in Bangkok would be able to bring about progress for the main meeting to be held in Copenhagen at the end of this year.

"Protecting endangered species and vulnerable communities in the Greater Mekong and elsewhere depends on fast progress at the UN talks in Bangkok."

Caring is Sharing (yes, Am, we're talking to you)

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 05:12:00 GMT

Being genetically hungry beasts it is not always apparent that elephant vocabulary contains a rumble or a squeak for the word share when it comes to food - yes, we've seen elephants steal food from another's mouth with apparent acceptance from their friend, it is not uncommon for the babies to lob a bit of dry sugar cane or a particularly thorny piece of pineapple tree at us - but more in expectation of a return with interest (we never see them flinging at other eles), I feel, than borne of a feeling that we might like a quick chew.

    Sometimes, however, we two legged beasts see the bigger picture, or at least flatter ourselves that we do, and feel the need to intervene which is why when Dr Cherry bounced into the office one day to introduce two friends Miss Sirinart Chaichanathong and Miss Warangkhana Langkaphin who wanted to deprive Nong Am (Raimon) of some of Bua Tong's milk we didn't immediately throw them from the top of the office steps (something that happens to unwanted interlopers on a regular basis - whereupon they are generally tickled to delirium by Pumpui).

    Nong Bonus and Nong Fai (as they are otherwise known), it was explained, are sixth year veterinary students at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at Chiang Mai University and they, along with their co-advisor, our very own Dr. Cherry, were proposing to collect milk from different sets of elephants to analyse the calcium and other contents at different times during the lactation and, as an aside, at different locations with different diets.

    One other reason they weren't thrown to Pumpui's tickling trunk was that, had the research been done earlier, Pumpui (or given that we use human milk replacement to bottle feed her, more likely our coffers) may well have benefited from this research officially entitled Determination of Calcium Concentration in Captive Asian Elephant Milk During Lactation.

    We jumped at the opportunity to take part, one of the hotel's suppliers of fine meats, funny seafoods and odd sausages, Horeca, volunteered use of their refrigerated truck and off we went to the easy bit, milking an elephant...

    ...he, he, he - good luck ladies!

P.S. & just F.Y.I. according to the girls, a previous study performed by Mainka et. al. found that an Asian Elephant's milk composition at 280 days postpartum composed of total solids 19.7%, protein 3.4%, ash (if I remember my rubber burning degree the ash would be the result of burning the solids before the flame atomic absorption spectrophotometry and just the unidentified stuff) 0.45% and fat 7.6%. The calcium to phosphorus ratio was reported at 1.5:2.1. If the ladies ever get their milk, we'll let you know about Bua Tong!

No longer a voice in the wilderness (do we hear faint echoes?)

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 01:13:00 GMT

It has taken me awhile to type this blog, not only because we actually seem to have more guests than this time last year, not just because September has been the month we have finally got the ele-dung briquettes off the ground, not merely because this was set aside as our vacation month (mahouts gone to Surin for elections, me, I'm supposed to be resting and spending time with my wife) but because, well, it is a difficult one to write - to be honest I was going to put it as a comment on the C.N.N. missive - mostly because I don't want to be seen to be blowing my own trumpet but I happen to agree with several 'new' ideas rising in the popular press and I believe they could use some more air, it is just that, well, some folks may have heard the new ideas before.

    Those of you who have been around the block with us will know that, sometime in 2004 we came to the conclusion that buying street elephants to rescue them was counterproductive and dangerous to other elephants, a mahout with money in his pocket buys another elephant, often possibly wild caught and smuggled in from our neighbours, often split too early from its mother. Even a market for retirement age elephants will tend to stop (has stopped?) the practice of donating them to Government retirement centres - if I have an elephant who can no longer work, no-one offers life insurance or retirement plans for elephants (though we're working on a few of the insurance companies) does it not make sense to bring it into the path of a well meaning sanctuary agent, bring it into the city, and have someone pay over the odds for it.

    With this money I put a downpayment on a new, younger, ele and continue my mahouting life.

    To get around this we put together a Rescue Rental method which brings the mahout and his family off the streets as well - cannot give them the money they made down there, but can give them, their family and their elephants a decent quality of life.

    After five years of doing this it is still a work-in-progress but it seems to be showing positive results, from the Foundation baby camp we've had no elephants return to the streets, from the Anantara mahout training camp we have had three leave, one to ceremonial duties back in their home village, one to be a film star and one back to the streets.

    That's three in thirty seven - a 90% + success rate, of course it is harder work, we not only need to routinely provide a decent quality of life we need to ensure that we (too) are not taken advantage of and, of course, in the long term, it will prove far more expensive to continue renting the elephants so I'll have to continue to find donors and go to the bosses cap-in-hand.

    However, since there seems to be a greater supply of elephants than there is of mahouts and the real mahouts would not consider making a living (to the point, it seems, of starving - dyin' ain't much of a living, boy) any other way it strikes me that a solution that doesn't involve keeping the mahouts as mahouts and concentrates on emotionally helping a particular elephant just can't be sustainable in a world where traditional mahouts and the Thai population in general need domestic elephants (again, an open debate on whether domestic elephants are truly a necessity would be an interesting one). Particularly a world in which businessmen (including mahout businessmen - we've never argued that all mahouts are saints, in fact falling foul of the mahout businessmen in the early days helped formulate the current Modus Operandi) are willing to drive a smuggling-for-the-street trade.

    Now, to me this is common sense and I've been rattling on forever on the same subject (to the extent that regular readers - flattering myself that such creatures exist - will have switched off by now) and it is so close to just normal conservation thinking that I wondered why it hadn't cropped up elsewhere.

    Well, I can't believe the Bangkok Post reads these 'ere pages, I don't believe we've espoused these thoughts (well, for a year or two) to the elephant buying-to-rescue programmes - preaching to folks that have been doing things their way for years is not a good way to make friends.

    However, over the past few months quite a few people seem to have begun quoting this piece of common sense conservation theory out into the ether and general paparazzi consciousness, a C.N.N. researcher even quoted an old blog to me, almost verbatim, as having come from elsewhere in the Thai ele-rescuosphere - which may be kind of flattering.

    The idea makes so much sense I'm sure it was arrived at independently wherever it cropped up but it is good to hear our own thoughts quoted back at us and I really do believe that the more organisations that begin to practice along these lines the quicker we can move onto larger problems.

____________________________

EDITORIAL Plight of the jumbos

Published: 17/08/2009 at 12:00 AM

Newspaper section: News

The various projects to help the elephants of Bangkok have finally begun to take shape. Thanks to public donations, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration has been able to purchase a 30-year-old, partially blind animal. Instead of begging for food in the dangerous capital city, Pang Bua Kham will get a home at the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre in Lampang. The rescue of this elephant is a heart-warming story, and a project that deserved the support it got.

It is not so clear, however, that general plans to continue to raise money to send elephants to the countryside is sustainable or worthwhile. The well-meaning programme could just wind up encouraging owners to bring their animals to Bangkok in a never-ending elephant march seen more as a profitable business than a rescue project.

The idea of involving the public in a programme to adopt elephants began to take shape about two months ago. BMA Governor MR Sukhumbhand Paribatra announced the formal start to the project on July 3, and predicted the capital city would be elephant-free by next July 2. City inspectors were dispatched once again to do a census of elephants inside metropolitan Bangkok, and to insert microchips under the skin of each animal, to allow formal cataloguing of the pachyderms. According to the governor, they found "about 100" elephants begging in Bangkok.

The lack of a precise number could illustrate the enormous problems involved in trying to keep track of these massive beasts. Elephant owners have traditionally brought their animals to Bangkok to raise money through begging when they could not find regular work, such as logging in the provinces. But in recent years, more and more mahout and owners have been bringing the elephants into Bangkok as an alternative to the harder work up-country. Bangkok residents, like all Thais, love elephants. Many are superstitious, and owners are able to exploit this into cash from people who pay to walk under the elephant's stomach.

In short, many elephants already are treated by their owners as begging machines rather than workers. This demeans both the owner and elephant. The Thai national symbol is not an elephant performing tricks in order to sell overpriced bananas to the public. Elephants are revered for their historical, cultural contribution to the nation as a worker and a faithful animal.

The programme to purchase all elephants in Bangkok in order to get them off the streets confuses two competing ideas. The first is that elephants should not be roaming the streets of the capital where they often are struck by vehicles, suffering injuries or worse. They should not be reduced to tricks or to begging on behalf of their owners. But the second aim must be to give the animals dignity. It is unclear that the plan to buy up elephants willy-nilly can do this.

The great danger is that domestic elephants will become part of an organised sales effort. Mahouts will bring a steady procession of elephants to Bangkok to demand a profitable price from the city and its charitable citizens - and then go back to the countryside to get another one. Such a programme inevitably will mean that unscrupulous businessmen will encourage capturing wild elephants and putting them into the same programme.

The problem of elephants in Bangkok is complex and cannot be solved only by applying baht. The heart of the city is in the right place. But purchasing elephant after elephant merely to get them off the streets is unlikely to solve the plight of these great animals.

Plus Ca Reste La Même Chose (The Elephant and the Crisis ten years on)

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:40:00 GMT

This is probably my laziest blog ever, the verbosity with which I have bored you (and in certain cases forced you to scan and miss the final point) down the centuries will be missing, in fact, I intend to hand you over to a more competent (not difficult) and more intelligent (almost a given in this 'ere blogosphere) writer.

See, when the outside world is closed (the eerie dusk and the early morn) I sit in my eyrie office and read the internet, watching the steady flow of words, thoughts, facts and opinions drop out of the ether over the past few months under the heading "Thailand Elephant" I began to get the strangest feeling of having read it all before.

In the opening piece of their (apparently more than one person) brilliant "Jungle Book: Thailand's Politics, Moral Panic, and Plunder, 1996-2008" Thai political pundit Chang Noi (and no, we don't just like them for their nom de plume which means baby elephant) links, trunk in cheek as they put it, elephants as they make the Thai news to the local political and economic crisis.

The only thing is, it was written in 1999, now we're in 2009.

Being lazy I'll cut and paste the whole of Chang Noi's 1999 text below, any insertions, links and parentheisised words are from 2009 (or at least the last 12 months).
_________________________________

CHANG NOI

The elephant and the crisis

22 June 1999

In Thailand, the elephant is a sacred beast in a very special way. It figures in the religious culture - in the Buddha's birth story, in the Hindu god Ganesh, and in many Jataka tales. It is central to royal history as military equipment, parade transport, and as the magical protector of the realm, the white elephant. But the elephant is much more than a religious and royal icon. It is sacred in a very popular way. Elephants are loved for their unique combination of power and vulnerability. In a curious way, the nation's experience of the crisis has been transferred onto the popular national symbol of the elephant.

To begin with, this has simply been a matter of prominence. Since the crisis hit, elephants have been in the news a lot. There has been a glossy coffee-table book about elephants, at least three art exhibitions on elephant themes, another exhibition of art by elephants (the inspiration of a Russian pop-artist) and a documentary film. The prime minister's wife in late 1997 went everywhere clutching a pink elephant doll rigged out in a wedding dress and diamond necklace. Mahidol University announced plans to clone elephants. And of course the mascot for the Bangkok Asian Games was inevitably an elephant.

But the elephant has also conveyed important messages. While nobody had much success in predicting the crisis, close observers of elephants in mid-1997 should have twigged that something was amiss. In the month before the baht floated and sank, an elephant ran amok and hurt a young boy in Samut Prakan; another killed his own mahout in Phayao;

(Elephant Goes on Rampage in Thailand, Stomps 3 Workers to Death)

two were possibly poisoned by pineapple-growers in Prachuab;

(Jumbo Fatality)

and another was rammed by a car in Rangsit.

(Why we do what we do)

(Pang Kamlai Dies)

Things were going wrong.

We know now that the worst impact of the crisis came in early 1998. The economy shrank 12 percent with amazing speed. Over two million lost their jobs. The numbers in severe poverty shot up by a fifth. The public reaction to all of this was deceptively quiet. No major riots. No mass demonstrations. No noisy public diatribes. No disastrous violence. Of course, in the background there was a gradual and terrible disintegration. More drugs. More gunmen. More violence inside families. More petty crime. More summary killings. But this huge social hurt was somehow disguised. The nation transferred its sense of injury onto elephants. There were lots of news stories about elephants in trouble.

In February 1998, mahouts seized fourteen which were being maltreated by tour operators in Mae Rim. In March, two elephants were killed and burned by pineapple-planters in Kanchanaburi. Another fell off a cliff in the forest divided by the Yadana pipeline. In May, a baby elephant in Surin died from eating pesticide-laced grass. Another adult died from possible starvation. Another was shot in the leg by a poacher.

And yet another was badly injured falling down a hill. In October, at least six died in Chiang Mai in disputes between rival tour operators. Another was rammed by a car in Chonburi. In early 1999, one elephant was wounded by a poacher in Chachoengsao, and a pregnant one was killed by a train in Kanchanaburi.

The epicentre of the crisis was Bangkok, and through mid-year, the press focused on the plight of elephants in the city. Like everyone else, the elephants suffered from unemployment. Like everyone else, they were forced to make a living in desperate and risky ways - tramping the city streets. They were hit by cars and trucks. They were harassed by officials. They stumbled fatally into canals, potholes and sewers.

They fell sick from Bangkok's pollution. The prominent cases were followed night-by-night on the TV news.

Towards year-end, this theme was used as the plot for a whisky ad. A young Adonis drinking in a bar for the rich and beautiful is suddenly drawn to the plight of an elephant mother and child in the crush of night-time traffic. He rushes out and hands over not just all his money, but also his Rolex watch, one of the iconic symbols of affluence in the boom years. Perhaps it was significant that two of the elephants killed in falls into Bangkok's subterranean infrastructure were called Pang Thong Kham (gold) and Phlai Setthi (millionaire). The elephant had come to represent not just the shock of unemployment, but the collapse of dreams of wealth, the fall of the god of money.

The elephant also became the clearest focus of national feeling. In early 1998, reports trickled in about six Thai elephants which had gone to work in Indonesia. One had already died. The others were being mistreated. They were increasingly at risk as Indonesia's crisis worsened. As months passed, the story became darker. The Thai mahouts had been tricked, short-changed, and packed off home. The deal had been set up by shady middlemen and "politicians". The story took on the shape of tales from the world of human trafficking - initial promises of wealth giving way to trickery, exploitation and slavery. A campaign was launched to bring these "Thai" elephants home. Groups got up petitions. The prime minister's office, commerce ministry, forestry department and foreign ministry were dragged in. International law was invoked. The Indonesians refused to negotiate. Emotions rose. Street demonstrations demanded that the Thai government do something. Activists threatened to bring 80 tuskers into the city to storm government house to enforce their demand.

This was almost certainly the major threat of public disorder throughout the entire period of the crisis. The call to "bring the Thai elephants home" evoked more nationalist sentiment than all of the protests against the IMF, "selling the country", and the bankruptcy bills. When the five elephants were finally shipped to Phuket, they were welcomed by the governor, the local MP and a flag-waving crowd who garlanded them as returning heroes. In this crisis, nationalism has been rather half-hearted. But elephantism has been strong.

Elephants also predicted the timing of recovery from crisis. The Thai government and IMF had been forecasting recovery "within 6 months" since the crisis began, and had long since lost any credibility. But elephants were another matter. Towards year-end, the stories of elephant sorrow dwindled away. In retrospect, we can see this was the time the stockmarket perked up, exports bottomed, and production indices turned north. Again the clearest message came in an ad, this time for a beer. An elephant is coming through the gate of the ancient city of Ayutthaya, whose destruction in 1767 was evoked many times in comparison to the current crisis. Unlike in the earlier whisky ad, the elephant is not oppressed and threatened. Rather, he is upbeat and resurgent. He is clad in finery, bathed in sunlight, surrounded by traditional dancers, trunk aloft, and preceded by Ad Carabao singing a jubilant anthem and prancing in obvious triumph. Witnessing this display of national resurgence are groups of Japanese and farang, who smile and raise their glasses in gestures of restored international confidence from east and west. If you had read this message of imminent recovery correctly on the first day it appeared, and put your entire fortune on the Thai stockmarket, you would be over fifty percent richer by today.

[This is Chang Noi's 100^th piece, and maybe slightly trunk-in-cheek. But only slightly.]

________________________

History does seem to be repeating itself, though perhaps not as badly, the final paragraphs, though, point to a way out - over the coming months we, amongst others, will be publicising projects that will hopefully turn elephants in the public imagination from animals of pity and shock to potent symbols, partners and teachers once again.

Time to put your money in the stock market again?

Of Semantics and Mathmatics (...extinction? extirpation? and some verbal constipation?)

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:55:00 GMT

A while ago, in some old magazine, there was a picture of me, of the type beloved by public relations folks and mothers (and bandied unashamedly around by myself if the truth be known), the caption read 'John Roberts, Director of Elephants, is concerned by the declining number of Thai elephants', on seeing it I wrote to complain and had it blamed on a sub-editor but with a question mark - who wouldn't be concerned about the declining number of domestic Thai elephants?

Well, me, for starters. When there are baby elephants on the streets, when there is not enough work or money in the system to keep the elephants we have in the style to which they should be accustomed, when there is not enough forest to let them all go, why worry about the decline? Better, surely, to manage the population scientifically, ensuring (as far as possible) a varied gene pool and hope we can come up with an answer to the question that torments us all - whither the domestic elephant?

It is a phrase so often repeated that it has become received wisdom and doesn't appear to be questioned anywhere that the 'Asian elephant is destined for extinction' unless we (the Thai elephant community) do something urgently.

While this may be true (what with global warming and the shrinking universe, aren't we all?) I'm afraid it makes my blood boil - as it does so often in my old age.

Firstly, just to make sure, I looked up 'extinct' in the dictionary and the definition came up as "no longer in existence; that has ended or died out", so, for the sub-species we are dealing with, elephas maximus indicus, to be extinct there would have to be no more elephants in Thailand, India, China, Burma, Cambodia and the Malaysian peninsular (and perhaps Vietnam and Laos but they are going for a separate sub-species all to themselves, though, as they are not a discrete population cut off for a thousand years by a body of water, a Himalayan sized mountain range or human settlement it is difficult to see that they'll achieve this - though I can see why they'd try). That is a total of around 50,000 wild animals (i.e. excluding domestics) of which Thailand is responsible for between 2,500 and 3,200.

Alright, the IUCN red list has elephas maximus listed as endangered in the wild due to their declining numbers and habitat threats, so yes, in looking after a small but significant subset of a species (about 7% - without factoring in domestic elephants in any other country) and maintaining their genetic diversity we are doing our little bit to stave off potential extinction it is true - but the graph often quoted that Thailand had 100,000 domestic elephants in 1900, 50,000 in 1950, 2,000 in 2,000 followed by a big red word EXTINCTION (crossing this line sometime in the next ten years and ignoring the fact that the graph seems to have been rising since 2003) does not apply.

So the word we're looking for is "extirpated" which means, in conservation terms, no longer present in an area they once were.

Semantics, Roberts, semantics, don't you come here with your dictionary and your internet links and your scientists - what we mean is that elephants will no longer exist in Thailand and that would be a huge shame, we must do something immediately to prevent this.

Well, I agree, but is the situation that bad? Are we going to run out of Thai domestic elephants? Well, I look around at our little camp and take off my socks so I can count to higher than ten.

For argument's sake, we'll ignore our adult elephants though they are, of course, more likely to produce young - we don't have a dedicated breeding programme with them but accidents happen.

We have fifteen elephants under the age of ten, two males (if and when we start a breeding programme we'll bring Phu Khi in to mix up the gene pool but I'll leave him out of the maths) so, even if no breeding takes place the chances of the elephants being extirpated from the Golden Triangle - if I get to keep my job after all this polemic - in the next fifty years is very low - Nong Am, with love, luck and care, we hope, would live until at least 2058.

Now, being a proud and protective father, let's wait until the babies are twenty before we think about breeding with them and stop breeding them at forty, with a possible baby every five years (2 years gestation, 3 nursing) that is a maximum of 13 x 20/5 = 52. OK, OK, let's give them a rest, never did get on with this barefoot and pregnant thing anyway, one baby every seven years ought to be enough = 37 elephants.

OK, OK, breeding isn't that easy, only a few parks in Thailand have had real success with their breeding programmes but with their brains (also the brains of our Surin based mahouts who seem to be able to pluck pregnant eles out of the air) and some friends we have at other successful (though controversial) international, artificial, breeding programmes - given that we're talking about instigating this in the face of a global population crash we'd like to think all scientific knowledge would be made available to those trying to avert this.

So let's say only 50% of our females turn out to both like boys and be fertile = 19 elephants.

With these, to me very conservative, figures by the time our self imposed breeding cycle would be over for the elephants we currently have in camp and under the Foundation, we would have increased our breeding numbers for the next cycle by 30% by the time Nong Am turns 40 in 2048.

This seems achievable as an average for Thailand, some camps would have less luck breeding than others but some are very good at it and, with the help of some scientific input, basic farming techniques may become viable scientific breeding programmes.

The questions arise what all these elephants will be doing in 2048? How they will be fed? How their owners will make enough money to feed/keep them? If there will be enough regenerated forest to have let them all go? How much freedom will they have? Will they still have to come into Bangkok to make a living? Whither the domestic elephant?

But these are questions for another day, today's question is, will the elephas maximus indicus become extinct in the near future if we don't do something urgently, if 'we' is the global population of conservationists then the answer is 'possibly' but I feel the guys that are saving the species from extinction are those working to protect the much larger wild populations throughout the range, building wildlife corridors to keep the gene pool wide, slowing down trains, preventing illegal development.

With the Thai elephant community's managed 7% we may be maintaining a life raft should all else fail - this is good work and we should certainly see this as our duty whilst ensuring our work does nothing to threaten existing viable wild populations, questions of management of wild and domestic populations where they are contiguous - i.e. almost everywhere throughout the Asian range - are interlinked and indistinguishable.

Let's move the goal posts a little, let's ask "is the domestic elephas maximus indicus endangered in Thailand?"

Taking the IUCN's apparent definition of endangered (if I read correctly) a greater than 50% reduction in numbers over the previous three generations I would say yes, however, I would argue that the drop in domestic elephant numbers was due to their lack of economic viability - and given the rapid decline must have contributed to a rise of some sort in the wild population as non-viable elephants were let go - just as the population rise over the last few years has been due to a rise in this economic viability (and drop in neighbouring wild populations?) - whether it be from tourism camps, taking babies begging on the streets or pandering to well meaning rescue groups who buy elephants.

Despite the expense involved in keeping elephants properly and the apparent lack of work an elephant of any sex and age is worth more on the market than a similar elephant three years ago and I maintain that the majority of breeding in Thailand is economically driven. In short, domestic elephants are an already managed population.

If it is decided that we must maintain domestic population (and a public debate about the reasons for maintaining a domestic population would be an interesting one - another question for another day) it is surely our job to prove that it is economically viable to maintain that population in a way that is comfortable and ethically sound for the elephants and (if it is decided that the traditions of those that have looked after elephants since time immemorial are worth saving - yet another question for yet another day) their mahouts in such a way that the market is controlled to eliminate the temptation to smuggle in wild-caught elephants and thereby threaten any viable wild population.

This will be a balancing act requiring input from the mahouts themselves, a diverse range of local and international bodies as well as a fair amount of good old organic luck - if it can be pulled off it will be something to write home about, take a bow before the world's media and perhaps get together, pat each other on the back and clink glasses, everyone involved will have saved the way of life of a (much maligned) group of people - the mahouts - and helped to continue the Thai tradition of elephant domestication...

...but we should not kid ourselves (or our donors) that, should we fail, the disappearance of Thailand's domestic elephants equals the extinction of a species.

Products of the Mega-beast (if you're Going to San Francisco, be sure to go along and listen)

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 08:40:00 GMT

Not often I get to write things like "cross the Golden Gate bridge and turn right" in these here pages, but right now, this is part of what I must urge you to do.

Recently, renowned (as opposed recently renowned) photographers Carol Stevenson and Avinash Pandey spent about ten days with the eles, the mahouts and a thing unofficially termed a Nikon Megabeast capable of turning out photos the size of football pitches and making all but the most modern supercomputer look like something Sir Clive Sinclair used to turn out.

These photos are destined for a number of projects, books, exhibitions and websites - the proceeds of all of this will be generously donated to help us look after our elephants.

The first part of the project, a talk by Carol, is about to take place at the Belvedere-Tiburon Library (I am reliably informed that you need to turn right just over the famous bridge) in California.

The text reads "Elephant Stories - Carol Stevenson highlights the conservation work and the challenges facing the Asian elephant following her recent visit to Thailand. The presentation includes images from a planned international exhibition series entitled Elephants and Mahouts that will benefit the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation - Thursday August 27th - 7:30pm - Founders Room, Belvedere-Tiburon Library".

The sharp eyed amongst you will recognise Pumpui and Deang Moo.

Finally: Food fit for a Prince of the Ancient Line (belatedly living up to our responsibilities).

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 08:57:00 GMT

The Golden Triangle is an ancient crossroads or possibly, more accurately, given the triangular nature of the region, what Devonians would call a three-way-cross or the Thais a สามแยก, armies have boated up and down the river and alighted at Chiang Saen to begin their campaigns against the interior. When it was Yonok the khmers came up here and had to be fought, King Mengrai started the pre-Thai Lanna kingdom here, the Burmese launched attacks on Chiang Mai from here and eventually turned Lanna into a vassal state before the Siamese Kings drove them out, had Chiang Saen abandoned and then re-populated a hundred years later.

For those of us with a good imagination it is not too hard to conceive that with every King or General posted in Yonok, Ngeon Yang, Souvanhakhomkham or Chiang Saen (whatever they were calling the plots of land on both sides of the river that made up the city in those days) there was a Prince sent to guard the place where the Ruak and the Mekong meet - it is not too hard to see this as a place where history has been made, where every step we take is in the footsteps of old soldiers, monks, soothsayers and court fools, every hillock can become, in the fantasy of a slowly aging elephant boy, a defensive wall or an elephant gate.

When we first came to this valley in 2003 it had obviously been cleared and cultivated in the recent past but it was, to all intents and purposes, empty of all but some nasty mimosa thorn bushes which bade us wear boots and long trousers and a swamp in which I bogged a traction-less tractor in my impatience to see building started and my love of driving tractors.

When the team of local contractors arrived to build the houses they, as is always done, poured some whisky on the ground and built a small, make shift, spirit house (before pouring quite a lot more whisky down our throats at three thirty every afternoon when I went to check the progress).

Six months later the valley became a permanent dwelling to four elephants from Lampang and six mahouts from villages spread about the middle North, a more solid spirit house was required and installed by Lung Nan, mahout to Lawan, in the beginning all guests were called to worship there before embarking on a three day course, but that ritual fell by the wayside and no-one seemed to mind.

Times changed and life moved on, we moved from being a conceptual tourist camp to a thinking rescue charity - using our brains and scientific theories and thoughts to look after elephants that have trouble looking after themselves, bringing mahouts as well as elephants off the streets, renting rather than buying to ensure our actions don't put other elephants in danger - we started working within the Suay community based close to Surin, right up against the Khmer border.

As baby ex-street walking elephants arrived and their mahouts and families needed housing the old spirit house was moved, with permission gained in kam meuang - the Northern Thai language - to a new area at the entrance to the camp, overlooking the buffalo valley. The T.E.C.C. elephants went back to a nice life in the forests of Lampang taking their mahouts with them.

Aside from our few Galieng boys to look after the Chiang Mai ex-loggers, on this side of the hill, we became a predominantly Suay village, the ancient elephant catchers and carers with their unwritten language took over - we looked to them for guidance in matters spiritual and elephant and our celebrations and dedications became elephant based, ancient and in a language from far from here.

Fast forward a year or two and here we are in the middle of a dry wet season and a blue funk (whatever that may be), morale is raised, it seems, to be struck back down, we work on projects but progress is slow, the places we look for luck appear to have run out...

...and then, sometime last week, one of the last elephant catchers, the few left alive who went out on expeditions into Cambodia and elsewhere to bring in the wild elephants, a mahout monk in Surin is visited in a dream.

An ancient Prince, speaking slowly in a foreign tongue, describes our camp in detail, describes our setbacks and our problems. The Prince explains that he is Chao Wiangkum of the Chiang Rai dynasty whose encampment was in this very valley, that he lives in the spirit house and was happy it was moved, but that he is displeased with the way that he has been worshipped recently, he needs to eat food as befits his station and for someone to come and talk to him in kam meuang, the local Northern language.

Chao Wiangkum, in an effort to save us further displeasure, hands down a specific menu of his favourite foods, mien kam (a dish of Thai favourites self wrapped in betel leaves), khao chae (a formal dish of jasmine scented, iced rice and lovingly prepared condiments traditionally eaten in the hottest season), luckily these ancient high-society dishes are prepared either as specials or regularly by our hotel kitchen so they are not stumped. The prince also requires boiled bamboo shoots (the local speciality 'nor mai') eaten with prik nam poo (a slightly smelly black crab and chilli paste beloved of my mother-in-law) a roast chicken and some Burmese style cigarettes.

I take it as a sign that on the day we learned of our mix-up (we had assumed a commoner spirit and had been worshipping with pig's heads and homemade whisky) and took action to order the correct foods in this, the driest wet season we've known, at least 164mm (my rain guage filled up halfway through the night) fell in twelve hours catching up our yearly average.

...Chao Wiangkum's food is lovingly prepared by the Anantara kitchen and laid out...

...he had specifically asked for attention from Northern people (khun meuang) and so K. Egg and K. Rat were on hand, Nong Oum and Nong Pleum are not meuang, but who could object?..

Amp is also khun meuang and, being the most senior, presided and apologised on our behalf, K. Lord apologised in Suay - it was, after all, an honest mistake.

...after Chao Wiangkum had finished and his cigarettes were lit everyone is allowed to tuck-in particularly the children.

It is good to know that our guardian spirit is a man of station and that our camp is his old fort and we are glad - now that we know what they are - of the responsibilities this brings.

Gimmicks & glitz (overshadowing or drawing attention to the real issues?)

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 09:40:00 GMT

Halfway between here and there, at the top of the Indian subcontinent, back at my old house a serious battle is being entered into - to me it seems the politics of money and pride are possibly interfering wildlife protection, there are domestic elephants whose livelihoods are at stake but this is the smallest of the issues.

    Since 1968 Tiger Tops Jungle Lodge has been operating within the boundaries of the (then Royal) Chitwan National Park, starting out as a hunting lodge but quickly moving to environmentally sensitive tourism when the Park was gazetted as a conservation area rather than hunting playground - the Royal mandate to hunt and to prevent others from hunting (similar to the Medieval hunting mandates in the Royal forests of Europe) having helped protect a pristine environment containing tigers, rhinos, elephants and a lot of other largely unnoticed but equally important little creatures, plants and bug like things that bite to irritation or hide in the dark and hairy places; sucking blood.

    Six other Lodges have followed in different parts of the Park with more or less of an eye on business and the business of environment protection, one thing that everyone agrees though, the first Lodge, Tiger Tops has paved the way and shown how the balance can be met between the environment and the guests - as well as actually paying their concession fees of millions of Rupees per year into the Park coffers (something it turns out some of the other Lodges have forgotten to do).

    Outside the park a back-packing industry based on the town of Sauraha who offer similar activities and a chance to stay in a Tharu village turned Las Vegas (or, at least, Thamel).

    What sets Tiger Tops apart, however, is the steps further that have been taken. In order to build a professional, first class wildlife department Tiger Tops has built and operated (through the British charity the International Trust for Nature Conservation and links with the University of Minnesota) the world's longest running, most thorough tiger monitoring programme - giving Chitwan (along with the Russian Far East) the best understood population of tigers in the world.

    Now, what's this got to do with elephants you ask, John just plugging his ex-employers, probably after a free holiday back there this wet season. Well, the answer is nothing, except, just as tigers give you a reason to protect an entire forest, elephants (and their gimmicks) can be used to draw attention to other battles.

    The battle is currently being fought between conservation purists, financial operators and the in park Lodges over the lease renewal - the leases have run out and the Lodges are closed, but as it is the wet season they'd be closed anyway so there's no real immediate effect.

    The conservation purists favour having nothing in the park, a wild utopia where animals can be free to be animals, much along the Indian model. The only problem is that this wild utopia has turned into, in some Indian parks - and, it seems, in the areas of Chitwan where lodges don't patrol - also a place where poachers are free to be poachers, when rhino poaching surged (tigers were still easier to find in India in those days) in '02/'03 the deaths happened in areas between the lodges - I know this, I was there, I saw the bodies.

    The financial operators on the outskirts of the park see the inside Lodges as having an unfair advantage, their guests live in the most wildlife dense areas and have a greater chance of tracking down the significant megafauna that people trek to Chitwan to see. They don't stop to ask themselves whether the area around Sauraha may be depleted thanks to the hundreds of people marching through it on 'safari' on a daily basis, or whether, should they be granted easy access to the core areas of the park, the result be the same and the wildlife have to find another home? The fact that the inside lodges pay hefty concessions to operate in those places negates the 'unfair' argument somewhat - it is surely a 'fair' advantage when not abused (though some Lodges forgetting to pay for several years doesn't help the position).

    The inside lodges, or at least Tiger Tops, can point to the fact that their limited numbers form of tourism patrolling, coupled with excellent and globally copied research, Buffer Zone and anti-poaching activities are a boon to wildlife protection and their cooperation with the Park staff have helped ensure that Chitwan still has a healthy tiger population where they are in decline elsewhere across their range (the latest figures released giving a huge increase in tiger numbers - without consulting the Long Term Tiger Monitoring programme - are highly debatable given the short term of the count, but still do point to a healthy population, the Long Term Tiger Monitoring programme numbers held by the International Trust for Nature Conservation give a more realistic picture, but not one of doom).

    So, what has this got to do with Thai elephants you ask? Get to the point Roberts. Well, I have glanced at the issues above and given a highly personal account of the arguments as I understand them, I believe that this is an important issue for the future of tigers and their conservation in the place where - thanks to the work of ITNC - they are best understood in the world.

    What does the press see when they glance at this argument?

    Our friends on the fourth estate see what will interest their readers, and what will interest their readers?

    Two of the elephants (of the tens that work inside the park) had been taught to paint by Thai elephant experts. This is the issue, something that in the gravity of the situation may be seen as trivial, that brings it to the attention of the world...

    ...and as I have said several times in these pages, one thing that sets us apart as a charity and an elephant helping operation is our scientific approach to our work, that everything we do is thought through and designed to have as few hidden, harmful side effects as possible - it was my years in Tiger Tops that taught me conservation theory, you don't step in to help the cute baby deer from the hungry jackals, they've got kids to feed too, in the natural world saving one life puts others in danger - but sometimes a little trivia, a little glamour, the odd gimmick can help draw attention to your work where thousands of serious words might fail.

    On that note I'll shut up and ask you to follow me on http://twitter.com/elehelp - and you can't get more gimmicky than that.
_______________________________________

Nepal's ‘biggest' artists in distress

By Sudeshna Sarkar
Kathmandu, July 19 (IANS)

They are Nepal's ‘biggest' artists. Yet Khem Prasad and Sundar Kali are in a sore plight now, on the verge of losing both their jobs and muse.

While Khem Prasad is a five-year-old male elephant, Sundar Kali, 35, is a female.

Both of them are employed by two jungle lodges located inside the Chitwan National Park in south Nepal's Machan and Tiger Tops Jungle Lodge.

Their work is to carry visitors during elephant safaris and provide an unforgettable experience.

However, since Thursday, the two, along with nearly six dozen more of their ilk, have been facing an uncertain future with all seven lodges in the park being closed down due to the expiry of their leases.

While the anxious owners wait for the government of new Nepali Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal to decide if the lease should be extended, the two jumbos are also facing an end to a unique activity that sets them apart from the other elephants: painting.

They are ‘trained' painters who have already completed over three dozen paintings and had exhibitions in Kathmandu.

Priced at $150 each or NRS 12,000 - a large sum in Nepal, one of the world's poorest nations, the paintings at their debut exhibition raised about NRS 250,000. The money is to be used to construct watering holes for elephants and provide scholarship to children from families which lost a member in an encounter with wild elephants.

Dubbed ‘Picassos of the forest', the two elephants attained their fame when a 17-year-old American schoolgirl decided to do something unusual for her high school project.

Ariane LeClerq, who has grown up in Nepal, says she was fascinated by elephants since she was a baby. Her parents used to take her to the Chitwan lodges where she would play with the elephants.

When she was three, she thought elephants were part of every household; her first question to her grandmother, whom she visited in Canada, was: "How many elephants have you ridden, Nana?"

Ariane's half sister, who visited Thailand, bought an elephant painting there and when Ariane saw it, she thought, why can't it be done in Nepal too where there is no dearth of elephants.

She emailed the trainer in Thailand who was teaching elephants to paint and he said he would be happy to come to Nepal and show her how to do it.

The next step was to buy paint, brushes and large canvases and train the elephants.

Khem Prasad, she says, was a natural who immediately grabbed the brush with his trunk and began making round strokes on the canvas.

"He has a lot of energy," Ariane says. "He uses circular strokes and when he is painting, you can see he is totally absorbed."

Sundar Kali was a surprise. Usually, elephants between two to five years are chosen as they are easy to train. But her mahout begged for her to be given a chance despite her age and she immediately cottoned on.

Sundar Kali, Ariane says, paints with placid unvarying strokes that go up and down.

The new skill the two jumbos acquired however may begin to wither as Ariane leaves Nepal at the end of the year to enrol in college in the US.

She says she doesn't know what to do with her considerable collection of elephant paintings.

"This can be your business after you finish school, my parents have been telling me half-jokingly, half in earnest," she says. "But even if I decide to promote and sell elephant paintings as my profession, it will have to wait for another four years till I finish college."

Little reminders of advancing age are almost welcome (well, some of 'em).

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 06:45:00 GMT

It seems a truism that I have been warned of since I was knee high to a grasshopper; the more years you put under your belt the more difficult it becomes to correctly place life's milestones.

    I really do have to be reminded how many years it has been since some of our elephants came from the streets, how old they etc. and it isn't just wishful thinking (honest) when I forget how old I am sometimes (and I mean in relation to the filling in of official forms or the answering of journalistic questions and not just the morning after a heavy night or when I'm still sore three days after 'helping' the mahouts dig a hole or some such when verbal reminders are superfluous and often under-appreciated).

    However, if you were to ask me where I was at 0147 on the night of 16th July 2008 I'd be able to tell you: in bed, sleeping, at the Bangkok Marriott Riverside - between (temporally speaking) Vietnamese elephants and a 'new land' summit on the 18th floor...

    ...and I know this because that is what the clock by the bed said when the phone rang with the news that Bua Tong, the ex-street walker who had been part of our mahout training camp for just over a year, had given birth to a healthy baby girl, later named Raimon and nicknamed Am.

    So, a year has flown past, the baby has apparently grown - so say those who saw her last year but haven't been able to watch her grow - Bua Tong still hasn't really managed to control her which means walks in the camp often turn into chaos with limbs moving one way and trunks the other, houses hit the air and expensive equipment goes underfoot, but they have the top side of the valley above the camp to play in when it is not raining and she's a happy, if unruly, baby.

    Looked after by a partnership of Raimon Land and Minor International with Bua Tong's upkeep contributed by Nathalie Coe, a guest of ours, she is happy and secure.

    Now who's to tell if I'll remember this next year? Just in case we don't we thought we'd better make the first birthday special, Dr Cherry and I hit the fruit markets, cash in hand and with our baby-elephant-begging voices on, invited Am's friends and threw a wild (elephant) party...

(unfortunately I forgot to take photos of the birthday girl on her birthday, so here's one from the Malinowski shoot, Teri and K. Au getting in on the act)....

...piles of watermelon and even the big eles have wait (almost) patiently...

...Lamyai must be full already to show more interest in the camera than the food...

...no such confusion from Lynchee, food's food...

...Makam - always a good controlling Mum - has Nam Khong's birthday coming up next, mid-August (see, forgotten that date already) - I know I was here when the phone rang at 0430 (or thereabouts) for her arrival....

...not sure who's bums these are, but who am I to turn down a little symmetry?..

...and Meena and Jenny make such cute sisters.

The pressure mounts on our City Cousins (even CNN are getting in on the act)

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:09:00 GMT

I have to admit that, in my old age, it is gratifying to see something that you seem to have been banging on about ad infinitum, ad nauseum (and yes, I get it, ad tedium) for years finally hit the big time in people's consciousness - albeit not as a result of any of my efforts.

    As the rumours started circulating back in January or February that someone in the stratosphere of Thai culture had become concerned with the plight of Thailand's street elephants, various different Government Departments queued up to offer their solutions, often working separately and to little effect more than a few lines in the news.

    Then a couple of elephants were injured in quick succession; one, Pang Kam Lai, injured when the brakes on the truck transporting her failed, her mahout died and the case captured the imagination of the nation - HM the Queen sent her private staff vet to try to treat the injured elephant's two broken legs, stem cell technology was used and as we speak she's still alive and recovering - Dr Cherry is off on an investigative mission later in the month and will report back.

    Various Government departments offered their solutions and I reported on the results after a little street sweep, we were encouraged but saw nothing really new, half a month has passed and it seems that HM the Queen's Royal Elephant Re-introduction Project has teamed up with the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority to launch a new scheme to help.

    Described as controversial (I think because the idea of giving money to the mahouts is controversial) the scheme will increase the fines levied on street elephants when caught and offer to buy the mahouts' elephants.

    The reporting on this has been somewhat erroneous, somewhere I read that the problem would be solved by micro-chipping the elephants (when they are all already microchipped - particularly the street eles as a lack of microchip is one of the few things that can lead to instant confiscation), that the eles can make up to US$30 (1,025 baht) a night where the Sukhumvit beat can regularly bring in three of four times that amount (our mahouts report, all misty eyed, that 7,000 baht a night was, at one point, achievable), that 500,000 baht is a good price for a baby elephant (500,000 would be the minimum) and, possibly most erroneous of all, reporting that elephants can easily be returned to the wild - as the elephant re-introduction project themselves will tell you the work they do is highly skilled, time consuming, expensive and often dangerous.

    Which is what makes the Re-Introduction Foundation's involvement all the more laudable, finding the money to buy the elephant, persuading the mahout to sell for a less-than-market price and - more importantly, ensuring that he does not just borrow a little more money and buy another elephant, bringing that one onto the streets - persuading him to change his reasonably lucrative and generational way of life (these guys have kept elephants for generations) and become a farmer with all the hardships that entails...

    ...that, all of that, is just the easy part.

    The difficult part is to find enough jungle, in 1990 the Asian Elephant Specialist Group of I.U.C.N. estimated a carrying capacity of 17.5 sq. km. of Thai jungle per single wild elephant, and then, more difficult still, is to de-habilitate the elephants to allow them to fend for themselves in the forest which can take up to ten years of highly skilled (non-)handling per elephant.

    So, it will be an uphill struggle and, as the CNN video says, it will not happen overnight. I would actually go a step further and say that for anyone else it would be an impossible task but, given the dedication of the Re-Introduction Foundation staff and with the power and respect commanded by the Palace, so obviously behind this initiative, it all suddenly seems possible.

True or False: Elephants cry when they feel pain (big hankies at weddings and slushy movies?)

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 08:53:00 GMT

It has long been a theory of mine that you only notice elephant tears when you want to believe that they might be crying, if they have been recently separated from a friend elephant or when physically hurt and, on several occasions (when I was young and foolish), when I was about to leave camps for a long period - you might choose to forgive me for wondering if the water on the face wasn't down to her sensing that my bags were packed and the monsoon leave was about upon me.

    You will have to forgive me for not bursting the bubble of guests who, while the Golden Triangle Taxi sits there, engine revving, horn tooting, notice a reciprocal wet face when come down for a final hug.

    Until now.

    This bubble bursting, this following piece of trivia, I must put down to our recent Vegetarian Veterinarian Visitors.  One of the good things about (V - or not).V.V's is that they are thirsty for knowledge, love to read and when it rains or when there are no guests (where are you all by the way?) come digging around in the office.

    Books that, being so formidable, have long found other uses - holding doors open, keeping snooker tables in the air, multi-gym weights, elephant tieing posts, counter weights to keep the tractor's front wheels on the ground etc. - are mopped up with ease and with excitement by young and eager brains.

    So here is the answer... (pay attention oh writers of pub quizzes, oh folks who yearn to prove the elephants' unique nature, oh trivia buffs in it for the fun....)

    ...elephants are apparently the only animal that does not possess "a lacrimal apparatus. Tear films simply flow towards the medial canthus and exit along a groove in the skin."

    Water on the cheeks of elephants is not a sign of emotional distress or physical pain (though, of course, excessive water can point to an eye infection - the tome itself doesn't describe whether the lack of actual tear ducts allows for increased tear flow in dusty or chemical atmosphere), your ele may well be about to miss you but, unfortunately, she's not going to show it that way - like the e-mail from your boss, the tears are just always there, you only notice them when you want to.

    Apparently, in common with all other animals, our tear film, the bit that normally keeps our eyes clean whilst not spilling down embarrasingly our cheeks, disappears down a hole in the lower eyelid and ends up in the nose somewhere - I didn't know that either.

    Incidentally, and another piece of trivia that I think I have previously commented upon, the tome also mentions that the jury is out on the elephants' ability to perceive colour, officially it is "still unknown with arguments on both sides" so there you go - any young university graduate looking make his/her name in the field of Elephant Colour Perception? You bring the swatch card and I'll bring the eles.

    You don't even have to be a vegetarian.

Street sweeping (on the look out for Bangkok's non-existent eles)

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 03:37:00 GMT

What's an ele team to do? Our land requests have been submitted and are sitting on someone's desk, somewhere while the wheels of Government grind around them, we've GPS'd and counted several trees and jumped through the flaming hoops thus far required; the Anantara greenification is now an Environmental Management System and the solar lights are trialled in the elephant camp, our tractor now runs on old kitchen fat; the plans for the new, improved, three day mahout training course are not set in stone but are at least writ in jelly (and when did you ever get more from me?) and the elephants, of course, rule everything still with their unfillable stomachs and guest charming eyes.

    We find ourselves sitting at if not a loose end, on a manageable plateau of fifty e-mails a night, thirteen mahout problems a day and, unfortunately, fewer guests than we could reasonably expect - what's an ele team to do?

    Well, we accept invitations, that's what we do - the other week a seminar on introducing elephant camp standards and a chance to visit the work we are sponsoring in Lampang, this week a glittering invitation to put on our city shoes and head to Bangkok to attend a Thai Elephant Conservation Centre press conference and, more importantly for us, talk about the Thai Elephant Assisted Therapy programme for Autistic kids and how we go about starting our help for that.

    Knowing nothing (yet) about Autism or therapy, it is going to be our job to bring (and pay for thanks to the King's Cup Elephant Polo Auction 2009) elephants off the streets to be trained to be therapists - or as K. Manoonsak put it for the gathered news hounds, if my Thai is good enough, "we already have elephant doctors, now we'll have the world's first doctor elephants" - though it is trickier in Thai as the phrase, mor chang (หมอช้าง), is the same for both so it may not have been a joke at all.

    Now, as I may have mentioned before, the plight of the street eles has been getting some attention from on high and all the Government departments involved have been launching initiatives to solve the problem - something was obviously being done as the mahout telegraph was awash with rumours, some said all the street elephants had gone back to Surin, some said to amusement parks on the outskirts of Bangkok at one point the best information I could get was that they were all in a field, without their owners or mahouts, somewhere next to the big bus station and being fed by donations from local people.

    So, what was the truth? In order to find out we went, armed with Lung Lord, a mobile phone, a driver who could contain himself when it came to our crazy requests, an undercover official friend from the Elephant Rescue team, a few vets an Elephant Camp Manager and myself as ballast we hit the mean streets to find out.

    First we checked the traditional campsites, the places Lung Lord knew from his days on the streets or that we had been before - no dice, no eles, no mahouts - a few phone calls established that the usual suspects had, indeed, been hounded out of Bangkok and were on the run down in Pattaya and Prachuab Khiri Khan; no time, this trip, to go after them - this is going to be harder than we thought.

    A few more phone calls and we begin to zone in on a campsite, but just as we're pulling up, before we get out, city officials arrive (coincidentally) to perform a raid - how does this go? Fines? Arrest? Confiscation? What is the new policy? We see dart guns, flashing lights and I.D. cards but we have to move on before either the officials or the mahouts see us - our work amongst the street mahouts depends on us not being connected with the authorities. Our bemused driver, having driven for hours to find the campsite is told to floor it, get us outta here.



    Following the next lead, we speed out to the next area only to spot two unattended eles under a large flyover, we stop and have a look, take photos - our first two Bangkok eles of the day - but there are no mahouts nearby and an elephant in tallish grass next to a big road can only tell a little of their own story.

    ...on we drive until we spot another elephant and, this time, what looks like a mahout truck and a campsite...

...we begin piece the story together, campsites in the city are being raided often, those that have chosen to stay on have had to move to the outskirts - this means better grass but, as they still work the same inner city beat each night, either a long walk or a truck into town - what can they say? Diesel's expensive so a walk it is.

...the vets inspect, the ele-detectives put the story together - I take photos...

...on the way back into town we come across one of the elephants from the first campsite, unarrested but fined, annoyed but treating it as an occupational hazard and he fills in the final pieces of the puzzle for us...

    In summary; faced with a tide of conflicting reports from different quarters (or eighteenths given the size of the tide), with at least five different initiatives working concurrently but not necessarily in tandem we went to seek the truth on the streets and, not knowing official policy, here is what we found...

    ...the elephants have had their campsites moved out of the city centre where the grass and habitat is better but as there is not yet any disincentive to work nights in town the walk back in is longer - extending their working night by a couple of hours (they still have to stay in town eight to ten hours a night to make the money) or drive into town (which also means the elephant has to work longer hours to pay for fuel). When a campsite is found it is officially raided, arrests and confiscations aren't made but substantial fines are levied, again meaning the elephant has to work longer to make this life worthwhile for the mahout.

    On reflection - and despite this not being, I suspect, official policy - I feel this is a positive development, the fact that fewer mahouts are willing to try to make a living this way means that, although those elephants that stay have to work harder, the pitfalls must be beginning to outweigh the pure financial benefit.

    Now to keep this effort up (perhaps easier as it is cheaper to enforce than the previous 'arrests and confiscations' policies which require trucks, fodder, DNA tests etc.), start a similar effort in other towns and perhaps make a disincentive from being in the town centre...

    ...oh, and give me more land so I can rent more elephants giving more mahouts and elephants a new life.

New Mexican town experiences bewildering population increase....

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 01:16:00 GMT

Town planners and county officials from Las Cruces, NM, this week met to discuss the future of their desert oasis following a the phenomenal population increase seen in the months of April in May that has lead to a housing shortage.  Undeterred by the lack of current accommodation, Las Cruces potential residents have added their names to an ever extending waiting list to snap up any property that comes on the market and the more adventurous are braving desert wildlife to camp outside real estate offices in order to be the first to hear of news of current residents' plans to move.

    Those residents, however, have no plans.

    Said a city official, "The sudden increase in applications to live in our wonderful community was in no way unwelcome but the reasons behind it confounded us until we interviewed our new neighbours, they knew about our wonderful restaurants, our award winning way of life and city amenities and they were happy to enjoy them, but the primary reason for moving here was different: it turned out they were all animal lovers and followers of elephant welfare news, and they all came from one agent".

    That agent is Laura Szalay of Living Las Cruces, who has agreed to send a percentage of all her house sales to a forward thinking Thai elephant charity that takes a unique holistic approach to bringing elephants from the city streets and giving them a new life, with their mahouts and families, in a natural jungle environment.

    Said John Roberts, Director of Elephants for the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation who, coincidentally, ate his last genuine burrito plate in Las Cruces before flying out to other adventures "This makes Las Cruces officially the elephant loving-est town in New Mexico, if not the entire mid-west".

When it rains the river rises (well, duh!)

Tue, 19 May 2009 02:47:00 GMT

The signs are all around: the mahouts' kids are beginning to look like Lychees they've eaten so much of the ripe, red fruit; the other day I got my first sighting of the daftest beauty around, the Blue-winged Pitta (Pitta moluccensis); every night-time dinner has to be eaten in the dark to avoid eating the swarms of maeng mao (flying termites drunkenly, it seems, searching for new homes, usually down my shirt or in my plate of sticky rice); the guys are suddenly interested in all those little roofing jobs I've been asking them to do for months; the eles come to work each morning with an inch of mud caked to their backs, the laundry operatives responsible for mahout uniform start stoning my car on sight; the bigger mahout kids have got severe haircuts and have gone to school; the hillsides are ablaze with colour from flowering trees and you can no longer see the ground for the new bamboo leaves; I need mud tyres on the Kawasaki to avoid spilling my coffee on the way to work; my flip-flopped toenails have turned a red mud brown....

    ....and, for those of you not as tuned into the natural rhythms of life and all these natural harbingers as I am, as an extra hint, the sky has dropped four and a half inches of rain on us in the last five days, oh, and our peaceful little river is now up to your chest and there's no way you can stand - my favourite time of year is upon us.

    Call it what you will, the green season, the wet season, the monsoon has arrived.

    The baby elephants are grateful for the aircraft hanger Anantara built for them...

...the maeng mao leave their wings on Nam Chok's back...

...there's plenty of green grass down at the polo pitch for Boun Na and Lanna to enjoy...

...hmmm, I swear I could ride my ele in here yesterday without getting wet...

...we suddenly find out which mahouts can swim...

...and which elephants secretly enjoy the feeling of being swept away in the torrent.

The straw that broke the illegal elephant trader's back? Let's hope so.

Fri, 15 May 2009 05:05:00 GMT

Just recently it seems you can't turn around without some agency or another announcing a new initiative to solve the problem of Bangkok's street elephants, from a re-launch of the good hearted but underfunded (8,000 baht per month isn't enough to feed an elephant and a family) effort to persuade elephants to live in their traditional provinces, to proposing law enforcement actions and (currently illegal) confiscations to army camps and already crowded elephant shows on the outskirts of town, to the 'rescue' NGO's proposing the buying of the elephants to wonderful sanctuaries in the jungles it seems every department with a stake is launching a new and - apparently independent (though there have been at least a couple of inter-departmental seminars reported in the press) - plan.

    This must be hugely frustrating for the campaigning Government Departments - particularly the F.I.O. and Thai Elephant Conservation Centre - and NGOs that have been working on sustainable solutions for years only to see their initiatives not put forward in any of the 'new' announcements nor, as far as it reported in the English language press, having their efforts acknowledged.

    These announcements were made a couple of months ago and I think the police dutifully stepped up their activities and the elephants disappeared from Bangkok, presumably to Pattaya and Rayong because they are now edging back in, I met one the other night on Sukhumvit and we are receiving reports of others reappearing.

    So far, so same old, same old story. But it got me thinking, what may have caused this unprecedented rash of concern at the very top of the Government departments to be seen to be doing something about the pachyderm problem?

    Rumour has it that someone very high up and very popular in the Palace has become very concerned for the plight of the street elephants but also with the next logical conundrum - the prickly problem of where all these baby elephants are coming from.

    The case outlined in the well researched and well rounded Bangkok Post piece below may well have been the proverbial straw that did the breaking - although it tells us not much new, at least if you've been watching the trade. As I have said repeatedly, back in 2005/2006 when we were buying elephants (before we knew buying elephants was counter productive) the trucks that dropped our adults off were all on their way to the Burmese border town of Mae Salieng to pick up a baby.

    Last month an old colleague approached me to buy an ele, I did a little research and was promptly supplied with a picture of several babies (I had asked for an adult but never mind) in Tak province (again on the Burmese border) - I didn't pass the photos on.

    Now, stuck record time, either there's lots of breeding going on up there - I don't know, it is possible, other more rigorous campaigners and researchers believe this is not the case - or these elephants are, at best, coming from domestic breeding illegally imported from Burma or, at worst, coming from the wild population that roams both sides of the border.

    I have previously commented on a report published by the international agency TRAFFIC that documented the travel of elephants across this particular border.

    So I welcome the renewed attention to our particular problem and I am happy to point to what I believe is our solution - bring the mahouts off the streets as well, looking after their families as well as their elephants so they have no need to source another elephant or look for work/income elsewhere and, as I've said 1,000,000 times, stop buying elephants to rescue them - it helps one elephant but almost always puts another one or two in danger of being split early or, if the reports are to be believed, being taken from the wild (at the risk of injury or death to the baby and the mother).

    Meanwhile, we must redouble our efforts to ensure that any new rescue-rental mahouts aren't buying wild caught elephants in order to have themselves and their families looked after by us.

PS. While I agree with just about everything written in the report I ought to say that I think the "Salangam surname = evil elephant dealer" argument could send people barking up the wrong tree, it is a traditional tribal surname in the Suay speaking world and I feel there are just a lot of 'em carrying that name (we have three families in camp) - I suspect if you trawled the English speaking world find a few Roberts' even more villainous than myself.
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Hunted in the wild

Our national symbol is losing the freedom to roam the nation's forests

By: Tunya Sukpanich, Photos Pornprom Sarttarbhaya and Tunya Sukpanich

After two months at the Mahidol University livestock and wild animal hospital in Sai Yok district of Kanchanaburi province, most of the deep wounds on Pang Kanjana's body were healed, but the adult elephant still had a deformed and crippled left hind leg from a broken bone suffered long ago. While at the hospital Pang Kanjana was found to be three to four months pregnant following an ultrasound check-up. (Pang is used for female elephants, while Plai is used for male elephants.)

The owner, Boontham Sala-gharm, had successfully registered Pang Kanjana at the Muang district office in Kanchanaburi and obtained an identity certificate for her on Dec 22, 2008. The next day, however, when Mr Boontham sought a travel permit at the provincial Livestock Department office so he could take the elephant to Phetchaburi province, her condition raised a red flag with officials, who ordered him to take her to the animal hospital in Sai Yok. Mr Boontham , from Surin province, claims that he bought the jumbo for 400,000 baht at Ban Nam Pu Ron along the Thai-Burma border out of compassion, using money borrowed from the Bank of Agriculture and Cooperatives (BAAC) and ''loansharks' in Surin.. The elephant's wounds, as well as her demeanor, made veterinarians and livestock officials wonder if she might have been captured from the wild, strictly prohibited under Thai law. When she arrived at the hospital she appeared frightened and depressed, and avoided people.

Her diet was also a tip-off that she might be a wild elephant. She eats only banana trees and bamboo trees and refuses fruits, which are the primary food for captive elephants, said veterinarian Chaovalit Nakthong, the director of the hospital.

The situation was reported to local conservation groups and the Department of National park, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP). Observing the jumbo since shortly after her arrival at the hospital, DNP officials were certain that she was from the wild.

IN RECOVERY: Pang Kanjana was suffering from numerous injuries when she first came to the Mahidol University animal hospital in Kanchanaburi's Sai Yok district.

The DNP's Wildlife Conservation Division (WCD) then confiscated the animal and filed a lawsuit at the local police station to take control of her, and filed a opinion opposing the issuance of the elephant identity certification at the provincial criminal court.

Normally it is quite difficult to differentiate wild elephants after they have been kept with domesticated ones for a while, but Pang Kanjana is obviously not easily tamed, as evidenced by her wounds.

Animal rights activists have long claimed that some wild elephants, after being captured, are beaten continuously for three days and nights to frighten them into submission. Veterinarian Sarawut Taksinoros, who is responsible for Pang Kanjana's medical treatment, expects that the poor animal will fully recover within a month, but said an abscess on her hip still needs intensive care.

LUCRATIVE BUSINESS

RESTING PLACE: After they make their nightly rounds elephants can be found in empty fields throughout the city.

Conservationists say Pang Kanjana's story serves as an example of the illegal hunting of wild elephants to supply the big business of providing elephants for tourism-related operations. These include the elephants seen roaming the streets of Bangkok and other big cities with their mahouts looking to sell tourists sugar cane to feed the animals, as well as elephants for local and international zoos and wildlife parks.

Mr Boontham insisted in several interviews with local press that he was not involved in the wild elephant trade as alleged by conservation groups. Is it just a coincidence, ask the conservationists, that many persons with the same last name in Surin and Buri Ram provinces are believed to be engaged in the illegal trade of elephants? At least four persons with the surname Sala-gharm were involved in the sale of elephants to the Zoological Park of Thailand, which amid much controversy sent eight elephants to zoos in Australia.

LOVING CARE: Veterinarian Sarawut Taksinoros looks in on his patient.

Pinan Chotirossereni, chairman of a Kanchanaburi conservation group, joined other conservationists in a protest that aimed to block the sending of the elephants to Australia. She took the case to the Administrative Court after failing to stop their departure. The case is still under court proceedings.

Ms Pinan said wild elephants are often caught and registered as domestic ones, and added that the problems for domesticated and wild elephants are closely related.

ELEPHANTS IN THE CITY: A familiar site in Bangkok, mahouts take their animals into entertaiment districts to sell tourists sugar cane for them to feed to the elephants.

Over the past 20 years, she explained, domesticated elephants have been increasingly engaged in profitable tourism- and entertainment-related businesses. Consequently the demand for elephants has increased, along with the prices offered for them.With a diminishing supply of domesticated elephants, more and more wild elephants are being hunted, contributing greatly to their decline.

A study by Mattana Srikrachang, an elephant expert and researcher from the WCD, Wildlife Conservation Division, affirms that the number of elephants in the country's national parks and wildlife sanctuaries is declining rapidly. The present population is 2,000 to 2,500.

There are no records of how many wild elephants have been taken from the wild in recent years, but some evidence shows that the hunting is more active along the Thai-Burma border than anywhere else.

An official remarked that ethnic peoples along the Thai-Burma border have long hunted and raised elephants as part of their traditional way of life. Some of them capture and tame the elephants to sell to elephant parks, he said.

The most common ways of capturing wild elephants are through nooses and pits dug in the earth, both of which can cause severe injury and even death.

Another more humane strategy, said one conservation official, is to raise domesticated elephants in the forest, where they have a high chance to meet wild elephants. At the least there is a good opportunity for breeding and raising the newborns, and in some cases the wild elephants become part of the domesticated herd.

Young elephants are most sought after for elephant shows because they are easily trained and they are lovely. According to research undertaken by the Parliament s environment commission, capturing young elephants in the wild occurs mainly along the Thai-Burma border, especially from Umphang in Tak province down to Sangkhlaburi in Kanchanaburi province, and from Muang district of Prachuab Khiri Khan province to Ranong province. It also happens along the Thai-Malaysia border in Srisakorn district of Narathiwat province.

Haruthai Kongkuan, a Karen member of a conservation group in Kanchanaburi, accepts that some of his fellow Karen capture and sell wild elephants. They normally use their domestic elephants to lure the wild elephants, he said, adding that he totally disagrees with the trade in wild elephants. However, he pointed out, capturing and raising elephants as a way of life is not so easy to change. Mr Haruthai said that expertise from Karen groups can be useful in conserving the wild herds, for example in catching injured elephants for medical treatment.

He urged Karen villagers to turn to ecotourism, and commented that at the edges of the forest there are often large salt fields where elephants come in large numbers to get needed minerals. He suggested that tourists could observe them from scaffolds in nearby trees.

He also advocated cooperation between the Thai and Burmese governments in protecting the wild herds which roam freely across the border. From his observations, the rapid decline in wild elephants is due to the activities of people from both countries.

ELEPHANTS AND THE LAW

Pang Kanjana was registered as a domestic elephant last Dec 22, only one day before she was sent to the hospital. She does not have a microchip implant as most captive elephants do. The provincial official who was responsible for issuing the identity certificate which verifies that an elephant is domesticated said that Mr Boontham gave a purchasing document as evidence, and that was enough to issue the certificate.

The identity certificate has long been a big problem because of the many loopholes, said Ms Pinan. Those captured from the wild are registered as domestic and obtain the identity certificate easily.

Under the Beasts of Burden Act (1939), captive or domestic elephants need to be registered and to obtain an identity certificate at a district office when they are eight years old. They also need a travel permit from the local Livestock Department office when they are relocated out of the province.

Consequently, young elephants aged from two to seven years are commonly captured from the wild and trained, then registered and certified when they turn eight years old with the claim that they were born in captivity.

One conservationist said that hunters often kill the mother in order to get to the babies. Naturally, the young elephants are under protection of their mothers and other grown ups in the herd.

Conservationists and several wildlife protection-related government agencies have therefore long requested for a change of regulations on identity certificates to stop exploitation of young wild elephants.

One proposal from various conservation groups and wildlife experts a few years ago was that owners be required to register 30-day old elephants within 15 days, and produce the identity certificates of the parents to prove that the baby elephant was born in captivity.

Moreover, the owner would be required to report the death of an elephant to authorities and return its identity certificate to prevent illegal use of the certificate.

However, so far nothing has been changed and the hunters continue to use this loophole to earn huge amounts of money from selling the jumbos, leading to fears of the elephants' disappearance from the wild in Thailand soon.

According to records, 40 elephants were registered and obtained identity certificates in Surin province last year. It is very doubtful that so many captive elephants are born in the province, said Ms Pinan.

Domestic and wild elephants in Thailand are covered under 18 laws and four ministerial regulations, leading to confusion and contradiction in their application. For instance, elephants are normally considered a protected species under the wildlife conservation law, but they are allowed to be used for transportation under the Beasts of Burden Act.

Consequently, in recent years both government agencies and conservation groups have proposed a new bill to clarify the status of the elephant in Thailand and to protect both wild and domestic animals.

The bill has met opposition from certain businesses that have the support of local and national politicians, as well as villagers who raise elephants.

Handkerchiefs out (traditional Lanna elephant back weddings)

Fri, 15 May 2009 04:58:00 GMT

There's nothing that brings a tear to even the toughest mahout's eye like a good old elephant back wedding and, as it has been a while since we did one, our tear ducts got a good old cleaning yesterday.

    Traditionally the groom arrives on his elephant, lead by a cacophonous parade of baby elephants, friends, family, well wishers, dowry carriers and happy hangers on etc. - yesterday Beau did the honours - on dismounting his ele it is essential to talk (bribe) his way through the gold and silver gates manned by relatives of the bride, anxious to determine his status and his abilities to keep their young cousin in the style to which she would like to become accustomed (all grooms have to do this, but I'm convinced turning up on an elephant starts things in your favour).

    The formal ceremony lead by a Brahman ajarn and nine monks is a pick-and-mix of different ancient traditions and chantings in different languages, ancient words figuratively binding the couple together as blessed strings physically do so.

    When suitably bound the happy couple rides off into the sunset on their very own ele accompanied by a slightly quieter and more subtle parade.

...when it comes to the catching of the bouquet, the Western tradition prevails, that said, either Pepsi is confused or, perhaps, the goal for an elephant is not the chance to be next in line but merely for a quick snack?

World beating, inefficient, renewable energy munching machines (eles doing their bit)

Wed, 06 May 2009 09:24:00 GMT

Up here in the sweltering North, as the Easter rush drops off around us and we look at the long entrance ramp to the high season and put together our usual raft of 'wet season projects' most of which never actually get done because, well, guests or no guests, we're always pretty busy just looking after elephants and getting everyone's holiday out the way.

    A lot of talk at the hotel level is about 'going green' and a lot of those conversations look at me and say, 'well, of course elephants are already green'.

    The hotel is already advanced along the green curve and has been for years, since it was just called common sense to sell all your old, reusable waste; to clog your printer with upside down paper and give the double sided stuff to the monks (often giving away financial secrets to any bored bonze who cares to read); to grow your own kitchen herbs and flowers; to compost your garden waste - stuff that pretty much every household around here does in order to save/make money. We may not have a fancy PowerPoint presentation like other folks (usually folks to whom the whole concept is a revelation) or lovely colour coded bins but the hotel's been walking the walk since way before there was a walk to be walked.

    One thing, however, we're not very good at yet is resource conservation, there's a great tendency amongst our folks to believe that energy grows on trees (a poor analogy as the trees disappeared 10 - 20 years ago) possibly because it is so cheap in the villages as to not be true and that water drops out of the sky; on top of that, a universal fear of ghosts, spirits and the like means even the toughest tattooed mahout likes a good floodlight even on a reasonably dull day - just in case....

    ...and then there's the global belief that if our rich employer is paying for it, then why should we worry about conserving that most global of resources: money. (I once caught one member of nameless staff on a nameless continent faxing a document across the office because she couldn't be bothered to get up and carry it).

    So we do love our three litre turbo-intercooled, air-conditioned, cup-holder equipped, stereo-mega-blaster saturated Toyotas and Isuzus (though even mine is taking a back seat to the 125 Kawasaki at the moment - difficult but not impossible to avoid spilling your coffee & dropping your computer on the dirt track to the elephant camp, but worth it for the lower fuel consumption) particularly if someone else is paying to fill the tank.

    Then, here in the elephant camp, we now have eight machines, expensively (albeit renewably sourced) carbon fueled and ready to go on a daily basis and - unlike our vehicles - you've still got to keep 'em full and they still expel greenhouse inducing methane whether or not you use them - indeed the less you use them, the more fuel they consume (bit like me on holiday) and the more difficult it is for the renewable resource to renew in between trunk attacks.

    So how to use our renewably fueled, CH4 producing whether they work or not, vehicles to reduce the use of our non-renewably fueled vehicles that don't emit a thing when sulking in the car park?

    The first idea is to use them for the biweekly store runs up the hill...

...yesterday was the turn of the bar store, the major query of the bar staff was whether the mahouts would know how to transport whisky without breaking it. Believe me, if there's one thing they know how to transport....

...I was more worried about the famous and traditional one-for-you-one-for-me tax on the transportation of alcohol by elephant...

...but when the time came we turned the right way and headed up the hill.

    Eles proving they are part of the hotel team and employed in going green as well as justifying their costs - of course everyone thinks were crazy for doing this but you get used to that after a while in my job.

    You'll see, one day, you'll see!

something I wrote when I was in Thailand ....... and I finally typed it up!! (by Olivia N Massi)

Wed, 06 May 2009 09:11:00 GMT

An e-mail from Olivia, who visited us in January '08, popped into my box, Ewong herself has relaxed and gained many fans over time so I thought it worth popping up here to give an idea of the first impressions.

Since then she has developed a tribute CD, a love/hate relationship with Beau (alternately being best friends and squabbling) and a dislike for me - luckily I have am a figurative pachyderm and, though slightly unnerved to finally find an elephant that has the good sense not to like me, still sign the cheques for food and such.
_______________________________

E-wong Olivia N. Masi

E-wong arrived with us in January. She's a big old ele. Well weathered that's for sure. Covered in lumps and scars. Her feet look like they've been attacked by a giant cheese-grater. Her skin has that ‘old' feel, loose and soft. She has one blind eye, apparently from birth. She really shouldn't look like this at just forty years old.

It is quite obvious, by her condition, that she's done time in the logging camps. She was possibly even drugged to work day and night. E-wong is lucky to be alive. Though she doesn't understand this just yet.

But these are not necessarily the things you notice most about E-wong. Whilst riding her, I could feel her heavy soul. I sensed that she's had any enthusiasm, playfulness, bossiness, curiosity, and just about any twinkle of her own personality at all, ironed out over the years. She breaks your heart.

E-wong is quiet. She doesn't show excitement. She doesn't feel the need to eat unless she's hungry. She doesn't splash about in the water. She is a very serious ele.

The other elephants have tried to befriend her. So far she has not responded to their advances. A trunk to E-wong, is a weapon rather than an olive branch. Being blind on one side makes her all the more unapproachable. She wallops anyone (human or ele) whom appears in her vision too suddenly.

Only time will tell if this ele's spirit can be revived. We hope she can learn to trust, for perhaps the first time in her life.

Oh lovely lady. I hope you come to realise that this is your home forever now. I hope you can learn to relax, to smile, to splash. To over-indulge in whatever takes your fancy. And most of all, to learn to be an elephant again.

Shocking pink and zippy straps (the girls go up in the world)

Wed, 06 May 2009 08:48:00 GMT

"Well, well, well" you must be saying "look what the cat dragged in, he doesn't write for 66 days (or so my little widget tells me) and then turns up with that look on his face, what could possibly drag him back to the fold, nowadays we only hear from him when he's broke or needs a favour, must be trying to sell us something."

Guilty, I'm afraid, as charged, though my long absence has had more to do with the intensity of projects than the lack of things to write about, I am, however, here to sell you something.

First the Casadei's, then the Blahniks and now, thanks to the good graces of Four Seasons Tented Camp but especially Perry and Lyn Butler and Footcandy, Christian Louboutin has taken it upon himself to design a shoe especially for our eles.

He checked with Yuki about the preferred design but may have a few issues with size, when her pair finally turned up in the mailbox after an anxious wait she was so excited to try them on, but, it turns out she may have to settle for seeing them on friends...

...hmmm, might fit the trunk...

...nope, you try 'em....

...possibly more like it, but I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of anyone who made Yuki jealous.

Is it time for John's yearly rant? (would 3.5cm of rain make that much difference?)

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 01:14:00 GMT

It came up in a meeting the other day, apparently had been all over the local TV stations, I started to pick it up in the English language newspapers and weblogs...

    ...and if something is repeated often enough on TV it can be believed without question, right?

    Long term readers (those that haven't closed the browser already) will recognise the precursors to one of my customary rants, the one about the weather and the press - looking around, two months into the dry season I see dusty roads and low rivers, I see dry season - the fourth estate, the river port authorities (who have access to the information below) see a drought.

    The story that got my blood boiling (but failed to warm my feet in this office above the ele camp) was about the level of the Mekong, something that can, thanks to the measuring station in Chiang Saen, be easily proven or re-butted.

    The graph above is from the Mekong River Commission's website for Chiang Saen - you can get the full details by clicking on it - and as it is updated daily, if you are reading this June or July the situation may be an whole lot worse, but at the time of writing, at the time the Port Authorities and farmers are claiming drought it shows as clearly as possible that while the water level's low it is not close to 2004 (the green line), the year I started drinking my beer on the banks, or the driest year on record 1993 (the light blue line) - in fact it is all pretty normal for the dry season.

    So, what has changed?

    In 2003 & 2004 the ships stopped running in the dry season, the river was too low, had always been too low, at that time of year - since then, after a bit of reef blasting and a few wet years the sailors were able to run year round, more people bought boats and started running, suddenly a viable business when you can trade the twelve-month - it rained off and on all last wet season, trade continued, and suddenly that's where the target is.

    Like the desert rancher who only remembers ocotillo flowers and plentiful grass in the year when it rained, treating the natural arid conditions as an aberration, the Port Authorities are ready to treat any blockage in shipping as a natural disaster.

    The claims of drought are reinforced by the fact that we are having a dry spell, it hasn't rained in the first two months of the year and the farmers are running out of water - I have previously bored you (ad-nauseum, ad-infinitum, I know) with my theory that the reservoirs running dry has more to do with land use changes and greater population density (not to mention last year's coordinated, laudable, Government scheme to provide piped and treated water to villages that have hitherto survived on well water) than a change in the weather patterns.

    However, the average (since '03) year-to-date rainfall, including the 'good years' when trade continued, is 3.5cm - enough to, perhaps, top up a dam or two but not enough to help the shipping, moreover, the rains finished late this year and our grassland pond - not subject to any water use or irrigation - that has always been our venue for Lynchee's Feb. 19th birthday party is, well, still a pond - this was filled by last year's late floods, caused more by rainfall upstream on the Mekong than rainfall here - for farmers, perhaps it is time to concentrate more on catching the water that comes in flood time than relying on rain to fall unseasonably, perhaps follow HM the King's sufficiency principles and stop trying to grow a second crop in the dry season.

    For boatmen, perhaps time to admit that the river has never been guaranteably navigable year round (in fact only through blasting is it navigable at all) and to factor natural weather patterns into your thinking.

    Ditto for the port authorities and perhaps to reflect that there may be other factors such as the new road to China and the fact that no-one has any money anymore also contributing to the drop in the numbers of chemically preserved apples coming down the river and fridges and luxury cars going up.

    For the press, time to research stories a little rather than print stock photos of a dry riverbed to coincide with this annual cry of drought.

    For me, time to shut up and go to work!

____________________________________________

Low flow in Mekong River affects water transport

CHIANG RAI, Feb 5 (TNA) - Water level in the Mekong River in the northern province of Chiang Rai was way below normal even though summer has not yet begun, affecting water transport, according to a border official.

Chiang Saen Customs House chief Winai Chinthongprasert said Chiang Rai is expected to face severe drought conditions as seen from the water level in the Mekong River which had decreased dramatically and a summer which might came sooner than in previous years.

"As the water level was below sandbars and rocks, cargo ships transporting goods between Thailand and China face difficulty in navigating and docking at Chiang Saen, the main port of the province. Ships have been forced to reduce cargo loads by half to avoid running aground", Mr. Winai said.

The Chiang Sean Customs House chief added that goods imported via Chiang Saen port have fallen to Bt65 million in January, down 37 per cent compared to same period last year, which was valued at Bt102 million. Exports also dropped to Bt1.8 billion, from Bt2.5 billion last year.

If a drought is prolonged, he said, the overall income at Chiang Sean Customs House will also drop. (TNA)

Of ruined temples and long dead Kings (Paying our respects to Prince Saen-Phu)

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 01:12:00 GMT

The history of Chiang Saen is long and almost glorious (well glorious to the non-partisan observer, to the Thai it's glory is dented somewhat by having been in the hands of the Burmese for a century or so; a pincer base for movements against Chiang Mai) and as many different versions of its founding are told as there are tour guides telling the story. In pre-Chiang Saen days the Khmer claim to have attacked the city of Yonok before the whole thing sank beneath the lake, the Lao claim that their city of Souvanhakhomkham pre-dated it before the Mekong changed course.

    Both of these claims do have some basis in fact, it seems, but it does seem undisputed that at some point in what we in the West would claim as the 12 or 1300's King Mengrai - who went on to found Chiang Rai and then Chiang Mai (having allegedly become bored of life in the religious town of Haripunchai - too many monks and teachings) - swept down the river, noticed three auspicious looking hills and came ashore. My brain is now a bit fuzzy on the whole thing, I think he then lost his prize elephant and managed to catch it again in what then became Chiang Rai leaving his nephew, Prince Saen-Phu, behind to found a town at the bend in the river where the great King came ashore.

    In the mid-1300's Sean-Phu apparently founded what is now the most beautiful of the many ruined temples found dotted throughout the modern town, bafflingly (to me anyway) outside the city walls, facing West to be most beautiful in the sunset, Wat Pa-Sak, the teak forest temple.

    Fast-forward 6 or 7 centuries, on a date that doesn't appear auspicious but must have be to someone, one of the town councils decides to re-enact the consecration of the temple and comes to the local hotels for money to help pay for the parade - well, money? Not a great deal of that around but we do have elephants, how about we send you a few of those?

    Phu-Khi, the resident tusker and parade veteran is in musth, so we sent Beau - Sean-Phu would, unfortunately have to make do with riding into town on a female, our apologies were made to the shrine of his Uncle King Mengrai the Great (who still runs the spiritual show around here) - and, just to add to the mix Pepsi, Dah and Sakura went along to greet guests.

    At the temple all the stall-holders were in local dress and selling almost traditional foods (that could only be bought for a china cowry shell token - knew I shouldn't have left my St Agnes Scilly Island haul back in the UK, could be a rich man in mock 12th Century Chiang Saen), as with all parades it took all day to practice and organise and about 15 minutes to enact, however, merit was made, the eles got well fed (and a night on holy ground) and once again the local folks will think of us when they think of elephants.

...waiting for the fun to begin, Pepsi with the main Chedi of Wat Pa Sak in the background...

...the babies come into the sunset camp for the pre-parade bath...

...Khun Noi and Nong Beau, erm, resplendent!

...Prince Saen-Phu and his umbrella carrier prepare to process...

...too much dust and smoke for my cheap camera to resort to flash, have to play with long exposures (indulge me!)...

...Dah and Sakura stay together in the morning mist by one of the lesser temples...

...still worshipped, the Buddha blesses the morning as the babies prepare for the slow meander home.

Fly me to the Mool (Kam Mool's semi-retirement)

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 05:09:00 GMT

She was already quite old when I met her in a sweltering, mimosa infested swamp by the Mool river in Surin province, near a town that had taken us hours to find, pronounced 'Stuck' but written Satuk - something about her attitude attracted me, she stuck her head out of the forest, looked at us, sort of sneered and walked back in.

    I've always hated the big thorned mimosa that grows around here after you've messed with the soil, so quite apart from an older ele with an attitude, one that can eat my least favourite plant (the Northern eles refuse to touch it), we had to have her - this was back in the days when we were buying eles, before we realised, through Tawan, that buying an old or disabled ele gives the owner a chance to find a new one and go back to the streets, re-invest and re-start the cycle.

    Kam Mool's owner did come with us to the North but didn't settle into the cycle of being employed too well and went home in the spring 'to plant rice' never to return.

    Kam Mool was lucky enough to have the ever jolly, ex-room boy, K. Win - a man who had been coming to the Anantara camp before his housekeeping work everyday for six months just to be with elephants as her second mahout and he was quickly promoted.

    It may be said that he and Mool have a similar attitude to life, it is often said that they have a similar belly (though I've never caught Win eating thorny mimosa).

    So it has been that Kam Mool and K. Win have plied their trade at the Four Seasons Tented Camp for three years, in her advancing age the easy work of mahout training as been ideal for her and her slow pace and calm demeanour made her an excellent partner for the more nervous guest.

    However, she has been suffering from what Dr Cherry describes, or more to the point I poorly translate, as a naughty infection (โรคดื้อ) for the last few months and is obviously getting old. Perfect timing as our guest levels drop off, we have a chance to give her a rest and possibly semi-retire her - I am still investigating ways that she might come under the Foundation and join the Thai Elephant-Assisted Therapy programme in Lampang as a therapist but for now, if any of her old two legged friends would like to visit her in her retirement home, bring her a banana and wile away the hours chewing on thorny bushes (resist temptation to make out of date political joke here) then you know where you can find her.

    Dr Cherry chooses to treat the naughty infection with antibiotics but without recourse to the patent Roberts' Yeng Chang method of elephant I.V....

    K. Win prepares to inject the vitamin supplement into the normal saline solution - the vitamins were so effective that old 'Mool side-stepped him that afternoon and gave everyone sitting on their hotel-room balconies a couple of hours of entertainment by playing Benny Hill chase with all of us.

    We were worried as last time she did that, three years ago, she ended up in Burma!

The smallest ele takes to the head of the valley....

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:37:00 GMT

Well, I'm surprised none of you have called, written, SMS'd or e-mailed - all you folks out there in webcam land seem to have missed a big change in the night-time life of the elephant camp, switch on the camera during evening hours now and, instead of a playful little baby and a tired Mum to fill the lens you get, well, nothing!

    Bua Tong's inability or unwillingness to control little Raimon has, for some time now, been the cause of a lot of head scratching here in camp - every time we let them out - instead of sensibly keeping her baby between her forepaws, Raimon ran, Bua Tong followed scattering cars, houses, looms and chickens behind her.

    The fact that we had to keep the little one penned up has caused problems for Mum, she has slept but has stayed in camp, never lying down, hasn't really had time for a proper bath - of the dust or the water variety.

    So I am more than triply please do announce, as the nights are getting warmer, that K. Au has now built a new night-time home for them at the top of our elephant camp valley so both Mum and baby can watch over us, just we watch over them - nothing to do with suddenly becoming camera shy.

The ultimate show and tell (take your ele to school).

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 01:03:00 GMT

Growing up in England I was always perplexed by American teen movies, no-one seems to have to wear uniforms (the girls seem to wear hardly anything), everyone seems to drive a Porsche, you need a passport to go to the toilet, everyone seems to get over excited by games lessons and every Friday afternoon you get to bring something from your house to explain to your classmates: "Show and Tell" - in England we get kiss-and-tell which is more fun but is not really encouraged in schools.

    Well, in Thailand, just as the kids are beginning to feel the New Year's and Christmas sugar rush wearing off we have National Children's Day, the purpose of which is shrouded in time and good intentions of a long forgotten Government and so is now an excuse for National Children to take a bit of a day off at school, eat more sweets and travel around the place having fun.

    In the local Sob Ruak school they did all of the above and each class put on a show, lots of dancing and not too much karaoke...

    ...in the elephant camp, we thought we'd let the kids take their elephants to school - for a young kid speaking a funny language in a school a long way from home what could be cooler?

...Pepsi shows off at Oum & Pleum's nursery school...

...the elephants take the idea of the athletics field to heart in some form of mild stampede...

...Na Lak is still too young, even for nursery school, she's used to Pepsi but he was too busy showing off so she had to hold down Deang Moo for a little while...

...it is not really their school, or their stage, but Oum and Pleum storm the stage, some girls just have to dance!

...slightly further up the age scale, the boys try not to look too cool on Sakura and Manau and the girls try to pretend they haven't noticed.

Queen of the Naga's or merely the King of Herrings? (the Don Sao photo debunked)

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:19:00 GMT

One thing about having fewer guests is that I have plenty of time for pointless hobbies, meaning I get to spend my downtime indulging my twin passions of ugly fish identification and naval history via the internet.

    So it was while flicking back issues of All Hands - the US Navy Magazine - that I came across a familiar looking photo, part of an infestation that had always perplexed me...

    ...anyone who has visited the Don Sao, the markets of Sob Ruak or the Golden Triangle - or, so I'm told, Nong Khai - will have seen a picture purporting to be taken on a secret US base in Laos in 1973, a picture of about 20 servicemen holding a long fish like thing; looking, to me, like the Chinese style dancing dragons one sees in parades and claiming to be the "Queen of the Nagas".

    Nagas, in this instance (as opposed person from Naga-land or just plain Indian cobra), being a dragon like fish snake thingy, one of which created the Mekong, concrete incarnations of whom guard every temple in Northern Thailand and the beasts whose breath or flatulence create the fireballs in the lower Mekong during the November full moon.

    I never had a problem with the existence of Nagas, or the existence of secret U.S. bases in Laos in 1973, my only problem with the photo is that one of them, the Queen (how do you sex a Naga? Surely then it is a Nagi?) no less, would be daft enough to let herself get caught by foreigners.

    I was happy, therefore - unless this is all a big cover up and I've been duped - to see that the original photo was actually taken in Coronado, California in 1996 and is of a tropical deep water fish from the family Regalicedae - nothing to do with killing kings I surmise, but one particular member of the family glories under the common name, King of Herrings - the very sound of which makes me want to put on an eyepatch, wooden leg and say "aarrrrrr" (what can I say too much time, too little work).

Not easy to read from the photo, the full text reads:

"SEALS find serpent of the sea: Look, on the beach! It's a bird, it's a plane, it's... a fish? Twenty-three feet long and more than four feet in circumference, this image from a 1950's horror film weighs in at 300 pounds. And it's dead as a doornail.

The silvery serpent of the sea - an oarfish - was discovered last year by Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) Instructor Signalman 2nd Class (SEAL) Kevin Blake. The oarfish has large, saucer-shaped eyes and a raised, red, elongated dorsal fin along the upper ridge of its spine. At the time of the find, Blake was leading students on a beach run at the Naval Special Warfare Center, Coronado, Calif. "It was unlike anything I had ever seen before," said Blake. "It looked like some sort of prehistoric throwback." Scripps Institution was notified of the find.

Although this specimen was dead, it was a rare find. The University of California, San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, has only been able to collect four specimens of the undersea giant.

Scripps' Senior Museum Scientist H.J. Walker came to the site and removed the creature's head and tail for anatomical study. He speculated on the death of the fish, saying it probably met its maker after an encounter with the propeller of a boat. (JR. Comm. - nothing to do with having a SEAL Basic Underwater Demolition Team in the area then!)

Walker dared the BUD/S trainees to sample their find, knowing well that oarfish, when cooked, tastes like paper. He tried eating it himself when an oarfish was caught in some fishing nets of the Southern California coast a decade ago.

According to Walker, the oarfish is harmless, eating only small shrimp and living in depths of up to 700 feet in warm tropical water. Oarfish average between 20 and 30 feet long when fully grown.

"Because of its look and size, this is a fish that gives rise to the sea serpent image." Walker said.

Records have a 56-foot long serpent like creature found on a Scotland beach in 1808. It's believed to have been an oarfish.

Story By JOSN John Carstens
photos by LT DeeDee Van Wormer."

Do you know where your elephant came from? (on smuggling, suspicion and scientific definition)

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 05:34:00 GMT

Back in late November I reached deep into my pockets and paid for myself and my local staff to attend the 2008 International Elephant Conservation and Research Symposium held in Pattaya, as well as a chance to catch up with old friends and to race them down from the Surin Round-Up (which we had all been attending) we learned a multitude of useful things, most too boring to bother you with and, as usual, way over my head.

    One of the numbers and statistics that did spring up was that Thailand now has between 3,600 to 4,000 domesticated eles - two years ago I went to a similar conference and was told that we had 3,456 eles.

    This number caused much debate in the back rows, at the time I argued that this increase might just be possible through breeding - not being a statistician or a proper scientist, I figured that our camp of 30 (ish) eles had had two born in that time so if we surmise that the 3,456 was made up of 100 camps of 30 (ish) with the same breeding success that would produce your 200 new eles.

    If there were no deaths, and factoring in those camps with a breeding policy - which we don't have - this could explain the 3,600 numbers but not much more than this, also the question, why the grey area?  Surely if every elephant is micro-chipped and registered there shouldn't be the old plus or minus 200 eles.

    The debate died in another beer and we moved on.

    Back in mid-December the issue raised it's head again, the international organisation TRAFFIC released a paper based on research between 2004 - 2006, investigating, at length, the smuggling of elephant parts - particularly ivory - out of or through Burma, with a small almost footnote at the end dealing with the wild capture and smuggling of Burmese elephants, mainly babies, into Thailand.

    They found a customs policeman in the Three Pagoda's Pass that was willing to share his notebook showing 240 transported and (presumably) re-registered elephants through his check point in the 18 months leading up to 2006 - he knew it was illegal and charged a bribe because he was saving to go to the World Cup in Germany (so that was alright then, as long as you are bribing with a goal in mind...).

    This information ties in with a comment made to me by a prominent Thai ele conservationist that they had followed a baby captured in Burma through the Thai border, the re-registering, and to the streets. I also feel that the Pass is not the only place the eles come across, for a period in late 2006 it seemed that every elephant truck driver I spoke to was on his way to Mae Sarieng in the mountains on the border above Chiang Mai to "pick up a baby" - these could have been legally bred, of course, but still....

    My mahouts would look at me and say the borders are, at best, 100 years old and the trade is thousands of years old, what's the problem (apart from the bribe)?

    The first problem would be the depletion of Burma's wild populations, in the old days a baby was worth nothing and let go, just a few sub-adults were taken as needed; now, with an alleged Government tax of 100% over there - for every ele kept one has to be given to the Government - and with the babies also taken the forests must be emptying as quickly as they are allegedly being cut down.

     Secondly and something that wouldn't be picked up by the statistics, the trade is quite possibly two way, babies are coming across to Thailand and adult elephants might be going across to Burma and Laos for logging purposes - if this is the case then the population of babies being taken from Burmese forests may be far higher than the raw total of 3,600 registered Thai elephants would suggest.

    Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, it creates a grey area, some of the more reactionary websites used this information to repeat a call for people to boycott elephants in Thailand as every elephant in a Thai camp was 'almost certainly caught in Burma' - we may know that this is not true, the 'almost certainly' bit, but even having to admit there is a possibility makes it difficult to defend.

    At the Anantara, Four Seasons and Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation camps we are working on submitting our eles to a global website that holds a stud-book, the initial work was done by stud book holder with information taken directly from our website and I was shocked to see our eles listed as wild-caught - his reply to my shock reflected the international view that many elephants used here are wild caught and could not be represented as captive bred without proper certification of both parents, something practically impossible to obtain to a Zoo standard which would include DNA profiles of the parents etc.

    It remains to be seen whether he'll settle for the ambiguous moniker of 'Origin Unknown' - to an apolitical studbook keeper there's not much difference, they're main interest would be the genetic mix of the parents, but you and I wouldn't visit a camp where all the elephants are listed as wild caught - at best the illegal trade inhibits genuine scientific research and record keeping that may one day save the species.

    With a grey area, no-one knows what is going on so a regional or global management programme becomes impossible to set up and implement, problems aren't spotted until too late; with a grey area the tourism industry which is currently in all sorts of trouble but is looking after Thailand's genuine domestic, captive bred elephants (mostly) to the best of it's ability suffers another set back - and those not determined to support to the best of their ability get a source of cheap elephants.

    We remain committed to helping to further any research that we feel will one day help the species, but please rest assured, whatever the scientific genetic definition of the blood stock of the elephants in my care, I have not taken to roaming the forests and removing elephants.

Making a Christmas Splash without Endangering Vital Lifesigns (the only heated pool in the North)

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 03:04:00 GMT

Here at Anantara we like to think we have our finger on the pulse of global trends, being renowned for our healthy Spa treatments we have always sought to provide both the hedonistic re-tox and the holistic health kick under the same roof - you stay, you pick, you choose.

In previous cold seasons, in common with all other swimming pools in Northern Thailand we have provided a Scandinavian style ice cold pool, having seen pictures of Muscovites, Blackpool-ites and Hyde Parkers alike taking to freezing water on the 26th of December we figured this is what foreigners craved - I myself grew up in England and so thought nothing of throwing myself into a freezing Atlantic in the middle of what passes for an English summer.

We are, however, not deaf to our guests' needs and customer comments such as "Wonderful Hotel, the best service I've ever encountered but suffered a small heart attack on entering the pool" and "Husband sunk by iceberg" lead us to believe that maybe all Northern Thai hotels had this bit wrong, perhaps the majority of guests actually wanted a warm pool?

Trouble is, not only do we have a world beating view, friendly and efficient pool staff, we actually seem to have the largest pool in Northern Thailand, so how do we heat the thing without compromising our environmental principals?

We have, for years, heated the jacuzzi from compressors on the back of the kitchen cold rooms and fridges but this could not heat the pool, for some reason my plan to have the Front Office staff perform vigorous exercise in the shallow end before work was met with a, well, frosty silence and the Chief Engineer didn't like the idea of dropping a warm elephant in there every morning - something to do with clogged filters.

So I asked my friend Claude, of Samui Service Solarpower, the guy who supplied the solar heated showers for the elephant camp and the solar preheaters for the laundry, he suggested a Heat Pump and whispered something magic about taking heat from the air - I looked it up on Wikipedia, read the first sentence, something along the lines of "According to the second law of thermodynamics..." and remembered my promise to myself on receiving an engineering degree which was, bizarrely enough (among other things), never again to finish reading a sentence that begins "According to the second law of thermodynamics...".

So, suffice to say, the pool was pumping in at 27C at 0630 on Boxing Day and it costs about quarter of the energy of a normal pool heating system and, as the byproduct of cold air is pumped onto the wine cellar cooling system I was able to console the queue of disappointed, ice-seeking, Scandinavians with some chilled glug to wash down last night's turkey.

PS. The proof of the pudding is, of course, in the eating and despite another self promise on almost the same day never again to have semi-naked pictures of myself published on the internet, here I am, in the morning mist, swimming, not dieing.

PPS. For those of you who do enjoy being whipped by birch twigs, fear not, the Jacuzzi outside the sauna at the sport club still retains it's icy qualities.

Stealing Grass to Save the Eles...

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 07:59:00 GMT

Well, guys, not sure you've been following the events in Thailand too closely, or whether you got bored of the story, switched off and planned your holiday elsewhere - if you'd done that then you wouldn't be alone, it seems there are countless millions others who've done the same.

    Problem is, of course, that Thailand's just as safe and just as beautiful as it ever was and here we are stuck at the top of it with 31 very hungry (and 58 smaller stomached but just as hungry) folks to feed, the food bill hasn't decreased much, some support from the local farmers who we've supported through the years has helped but, hey, they've got to live too and there is a market for their crops elsewhere.

    What're we going to do? Well, there is yet diesel in the tank, so I hopped in the car to the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre where they have long been conducting research into alternative but safe methods of raising money for elephants through elephants (that I have hailed over the years but never adopted because 'we have our guests') as well as new and cheaper ways of feeding them.

    As an ex-conservationist I pale at the idea of planting African or American grasses on our Thai rice paddies (I'd rather be planting endangered species of local rice) but desperate times call for disparate measures, thievery even...

    ...stealing ideas is one thing, but stealing food from an elephant? Candy from a baby this is not, who could we possibly nick from?

    Mother Yom? She knows me too well, saw me coming with a look in her eye that said, munching through her last banana leaves, 'John, you look down on your luck, skinny even'. Janpen? Well, there's never any food around her anyway, all down the gullet as soon as put in front, same with Wandi.

Tantawan was there too, ever generous, mothering without Yom's stern you'll-have-to-stand-on-your-own-two-feet-sometime look, but who could steal food from such a sweet ele? Who else, ahhh, but of course...

    ...Lawan, sweet, easily distracted, Lawan, like candy from a baby indeed...

    Luckily, with Bana Grass (Pennisetum purpureum x P. americanum) it is only the leaves that the eles eat and only the stalks you need to grow, so, despite the look on old friend 'Wan's face I wasn't nicking food we were helping dispose of her leftovers-to-be (& Lung Nan was happy to help)...

    Back home and K. Cha, Phu Ki's mahout, is put in charge of the planting projects in our old rice paddies, he has planted the fodder grass in his Galieng mountains and in Mae Taeng to feed his elephants there.

    So the Bana is planted, I also managed, by less sneaky means, to get hold of some Purple Guinea Grass (Panicum maximum) seeds and these will be planted as soon as we can dry out the other paddies - we won't be needing the seeds and all the literature mentions that Guinea Grass is good for attracting seed eating birds.

    On a more serious note, both grasses are reported as being good for cattle and easily grown perennials, if the trials go well here we can support our old suppliers with both seed and stalk and introduce a new and nutritious fodder to the area to benefit not only our eles but those that raise other livestock.

    All for a tank of diesel, a few satang, the bright ideas of the TECC folks and the fun of distracting Lawan for old time's sake - those of you with long memories will know what I mean!

Zoos in for a rough ride, but where's the information from?

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 06:19:00 GMT

Well, it has been a while since elephants were in the news on a scale like this, has it not?

    I guess that most of those of you who read this have 'elephant' somewhere in their Google Alerts and have seen the headlines screaming "Zoos kill elephants", "Cruel Zoos Cause Death to Jumbos" and so on and so forth. Being a dedicated fence sitter I tried to stay out of the debate - as indeed I do the to zoo or not to zoo question - sort of intrinsically aware that it is not a good idea to keep eles in zoos but also of the opinion that while eles are on the streets, working, underfed in trekking camps, with wild eles throughout the Asian range fighting and dieing for their land and fodder then a good zoo and an ambassador-for-the-species role may not be a bad thing, those eles in zoos may get to call themselves the lucky ones.

    May.

    Then along come the headlines - zoo elephant average lifespan = 19 years, domesticated in range = 40+ years, wild = 56 - this is truly shocking, damning even, the political campaigning organisation that got hold of the research (though not the researchers themselves) use this to advocate the ban of elephants in zoos.

    I'm not advocating zoo life, nor am I condemning it, just trying to follow a balanced approach so let us take a step back.

    So let me play researchers' advocate for a second, the figures are based on three populations, European zoo elephants reaching back to the 1960's, a protected population in Ambosseli National Park in Kenya and Dr Khyne U Mar's studbook from the Burmese timber industry, from memory this amazing book stretched back from the late 1800's to the mid eighties or nineties when Dr. Khyne left Burma.

    What's wrong with this picture? - it is the most extensive data set available anywhere in the world but...

    Zoo's will argue that they have improved no end since the 1960's, their understanding of elephants and their welfare have improved also, larger enclosure sizes, more emphasis put on group interaction, on stimulating games and activities.

    They will argue their life expectancy of adult elephants will have improved over the years - interestingly, thanks to an elephantine herpes virus, I'm not sure their overall life expectancy will have as many calves in zoos (and, in certain populations, Sri Lanka for example, in the wild) are dieing under three years old, zoo's will argue that they are the people conducting research into the prevention and cure this relatively newly discovered and potentially devastating disease for wild and domestic elephants.

    I don't know anything about the Ambosseli population of wild elephants, whether they are researched well enough for still births to be counted (as they are, and, nowadays, investigated in zoo's), whether there is significant human-elephant conflict, whether EEHV is present. But will suffice to comment that a wild elephant's lot throughout it's range is probably not as comfortable or as safe as it is in Ambosseli.

    From my understanding the majority of data from Dr. Khyne's studbook was taken from the days when the Burmese timber industry was a beacon of elephant welfare and sustainable logging processes, truly amazing and impeccable systems were in place to ensure the survival of the forests for centuries to come and the survival of the animals that allowed those forests to be sustainably harvested. I have no way of knowing if these systems are still in place, but somehow doubt it.

    I do know that the systems in place in Myanmar are not in place in other countries throughout the range and I would hope in Thailand we have a better life expectancy than 40, but I would never claim our systems are better (though have improved since the 1800's, as will the Burmese, with improved veterinary understanding and treatment). Also, from my understanding, most Burmese timber elephants were wild-caught at sub-adult thereby eliminating the problems of infant death from the statistics - did the stud book record those elephants that died during capture and training or only those that lived to become working elephants? I simply don't know.

    Please understand, I welcome the debate, I'm not condemning anyone. As the researchers and Dr Khyne recommended behind the screaming, campaigning, political headlines, and due to the large nature of the data set the Zoo Keepers agreed, let us use this research to investigate how to make the lives of zoo elephants better - indeed the zoo keepers point out that the problems of foot rot and obesity have long been acknowledged and, in many zoos, are being tackled, the problems of stress related to loneliness and inactivity also.

    The only thing I am trying to suggest is that we read behind the headlines of each and every piece of research we see, try to understand how comparable the data sets might be and see how applicable they may be to the global populations and the current situation as a whole.

    The researchers involved did this, it is the duty of the media and the campaigning organisation to do so also.

On both sides of the tracks (love, tradition and abuse in Surin)

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 03:50:00 GMT

Sitting here in my cold office, looking out as the sun rises into the elephant camp, picking out first the roof tops of the mahout houses, the solar water heaters, the silk weaving hut and then belatedly, it seems, this December morning, a huddled group of mahouts, wives and children hidden deep in winter coats with steam raising from their breath, enduring the smoke from the fire and shivering in the 8 degree cool.

    Surely, you might say, these are the hardy Northern mahouts, the Galieng guys from the mountains of Chiang Mai, the Thai Leu from the hills of Hong Sa but you'd be wrong (for the most part), dealing with ex-street elephants as we do we select our elephants from the North Eastern (way, way, way South East of here) community based around the town of Surin, the place where most of the itinerant eles and therefore mahouts hail from - the Englishman, by the way, is sitting in an office the sun never touches in his suit jacket.

    Now, Surin is home to these folks and they miss it dearly but I have to admit that I have never been a fan, it is a hard land where, though you never seem to be cold, either drought or flood seem to be a constant companion, it is a great flat plain which must, once, have been prime elephant territory; a tall grass swamp, seasonally inundated, it is not difficult to imagine how it became home to the elephant catching tribes just as it is not difficult to see how, now the swamp is rice paddy, those that have kept and caught wild elephants from time immemorial find it all but impossible to make a living there.

    Personally though, I suffer from whatever the antonym of claustrophobia is and tend to panic if I can't see a hill and, once the car drops out of the mountains of Nam Nao National Park onto the Isaan plateau, it seems one can drive for hours at speeds frowned upon by the sweltering, officious police of the flatlands without coming across even a hillock - nowadays air-conditioning can keep out the heat, a hat can beat off the rain, the feeling of being alone in an open land...

    Still it is home to friends and is home to one of the most spectacular sights in the elephant world, once a year the itinerant eles return to celebrate their heritage at the Surin Elephant Round-Up, making it the only place in Thailand that it is possible not only to see most of the street eles and their people in one place and, as you'll see from the videos, possibly the only place in the world to see up to 300 eles in one place.

    It was obvious to me, as it always is with these elephant folks, that the majority of elephants are loved and looked after to the best of the ability of the family they are considered part of, I thought twice about putting 'abuse' in the title as it gets hurled at the Surin keepers too much - often, in my opinion, doing your best to make a living for your elephant by taking it onto the streets is misrepresented as abuse, doing gimmicky tricks to turn an extra stick of sugarcane is not natural behaviour but, as I have repeatedly said, we shouldn't be too quick to condemn - we always say that we are worried more for the baby elephants, split far too early, and looked after by non-mahouts, taken onto the streets by people who don't hold the elephant owning tradition and see it just as a way of making cash...

...'mahouts' who can't tell you the name of the 'mother that died giving birth', or, when found in Bangkok can't tell which village in Surin they grew up in...

...who tell you that the scars on the head of their one year old are part of necessary training and there's no other way.

    There, got the preaching bit out of the way, the 'abuse' bit over now I can get on with enjoying the real mahouts and the love for and interdependence on their elephants as part of the family, get on with admitting I love the round-up the elephants and the people...

...where there is free drugs there'll be mahouts, this is the Surin mobile veterinary clinic handing out mahout veterinary kits at the beginning of the parade on buffet day...

...three tuskers lead the 'rank and file' part of the parade to the buffet, to give you a picture of how many eles make up the rank and file, watch 60 seconds of video and bare in mind I caught up here halfway through...

...leading the parade were the Mor Chang, the last remaining of the old elephant catchers, those that have qualified for the title by catching at least one wild elephant...

...looking a little lost in traffic and representing the tradition by which their people once lived and were revered...

...out of place in the town from which they once set out all those years ago, dressed and equipped as though for an expedition...

...we stopped for noodles and the expedition pack elephant found the buffet.

But it wasn't all catching up with old friends, gawping at elephants and wondering at the old ways - well it was for me, but we put Dr Cherry to work with the Surin and Lampang mobile clinics who never miss a trick, all the elephants in one place means veterinary checks for all and hard work for the already hard working vets...

...after the buffet and parade the next day brings the show, I've blogged this before, the story of the Suay people and their association with elephants, their glory days when catching the abundant wild eles was the secret of their success and their adaptation to the modern world. Lung Buddha, our elephant polo ele-co-organiser showed us around and got us the best seats in the house - in the mahouts' accommodation - which afforded the best views of kids playing with their eles...

...the 'herd' scene during the capture re-enaction...

...and, to top it all off, a secret glimpse of an old friend in Tong Kwao (looking fat and happy) - I also got a kiss during the parade and a quick ride at the show ground, just for old times' sake you understand.

Clean clothes for the Autistic Ele Kids.

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 01:01:00 GMT

The GPS chip in my poor old phone is worn out, the Bluetooth chip has provided patchy e-mails from jungle corners and bare hotel rooms, in these days of easy communication there's no excuse for having been out of touch and said blue teeth have even provided the Youtube site with a couple of videos...

    ...and yet silence on these pages, bet you've been wondering what I'm up to? Well, for some reason the full moon in late November causes elephant folks to pack their trunks and travel (the full moon always drives us a little crazy) as we go out and test the water, meeting other ele folks and eles along the way.

    First stop on our trip was perhaps the most important, we had to drop off a present to one of my favourite projects, Chiang Mai University and K. Prasop's programme to use elephants as therapists for Austistic kids - the programme has reached a level whereby they are ready to go regularly residential at the Elephant and Mahout Training College in Lampang.

    Well the mahout school is fired up to receive trainee proffessional mahouts, the odd Western guest and tribes of foreign students but hardly too many kids and their well-to-do parents - the mahouts' wives have been doing the laundry there for years in the most traditional manner possible and, to save their hands from turning prune-like and arthritic, we felt they could do with an heavy duty washing machine.

    So we dug into the funds raised at last year's King's Cup Elephant Polo and bought them a shiny new machine - if no-one else is, we hope the mahouts will be grateful for their newly silky handed wives!

...sorry the picture isn't more exciting, I hope to provide before and after photos of the horny handed but for now you'll have to make do with K. Prasop in his jogging kit and K. Tu - Chief Elephant Coordinator at the School - in her pre-work clothes and what, I assure you, is a full box of washing machine.

    It was a chilly morning and we had promises to keep, some 1,500 km to go before I (the driver at least) slept.

Posh V.O.S.H: Seeing-eye elephants not required (this time)

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:17:00 GMT

Anantara Golden Triangle recently played host to the Thailand leg of Volunteer Optometric Services for Humanity, an organisation that, through the good services of volunteer opticians, provides free eye clinics and donated glasses to the world's poor.

    Before the eye clinic the good Dr's came to ride the elephants, took part in the cooking school and toured the area.

    Normally, it is said, these adventurous eye doctors have to climb mountains, 4wd through sweating jungles, perhaps even use elephants as essential transportation rather than as a fun side trip. Through various connections, however, the Thailand trip is 5* and Mercedes Limousine throughout - hence the moniker Posh Vosh - and let's face it they deserve the rest.

    When it came to the clinic they managed to correct the eyesight of about 700 people over three days with the help of volunteers from amongst the Anantara staff - including our very own K. Amp and Dr. Cherry.

...Amp does her translation bit at the 'initial eye test'...

...K. Anne from the Front Office at the consultancy stage...

...and thanks to the girls' generously donated time, some of our weaving wives got new glasses and all the mahouts got protective sun shades.

A zoo-keeper's dilemma (and an ele with an unfortunate name in today's climate)

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 01:25:00 GMT

Back in the old days when Zoo's were places where the public came to gawp at exotic creatures for the financial benefit of the owners or the city people didn't think too much about the mental welfare or even mental capacity of their charges - after all, these were the tail end of the days when only the mega rich could afford to go on safari and see these things in the wild.

    Nowadays with 24hr Animal Planet beamed in from space and budget airlines the public, in general, have a much better chance of knowing and caring about the wild existence of the exotic creature's cousins, Zoo's have had to up their game and provide educational experiences that can't be found on TV (whilst phasing out what would seem to be their obvious advantage over the cathode ray (smells aside): interaction with the animals themselves - Health and Safety regulations have largely put paid to your chances of meeting domestic Zoo creatures, especially elephants) whilst justifying their presence in the scientific community by taking on a conservation role to protect species which, they argue, are inadequately protected in the wild.

    For the most part they have done this well, but adapting to the times cannot solve all their problems and, on the occasion of the birthday of one of their celebrated elephants, Auckland Zoo have bravely decided to address the issue one would guess they would have preferred to dodge, at least in public.

    What to do when one of the two remaining Asian eles in New Zealand dies, as will inevitably happen to us all even with the best care and best diet? I guess the reason for going public now is to do it when the tide of public goodwill is focused on the ele's birthday and to show the critics that there is a planning process and that the remaining elephant's mental and physical welfare are part of that process.

    Not being a Kiwi, not being a Zoo keeper (well, perhaps a glorified amateur one) I would say the obvious solution would be to pack poor lonely Burma, the expected survivor, off to the Zoo's in Australia that have just received their Thai eles or even, if they wanted huge PR, back to one of the sanctuaries back here (they don't say how old Burma is, but if young enough perhaps to one of the dehabilitation and release projects).

    But, I can see that the keepers and the city have become attached to their ele and I can see that they will know that they can look after Burma well and will have the capacity to take on more eles, they'll be reluctant to give her up - they state that 'modern captive animal practice dictates' that Burma must have an ele companion, I would say that ele behaviour dictates, though living with mahouts who have taken babies onto the streets without ele company I know all too well how easy it is to fall into the trap of feeling that "my company is all she needs", especially with an adult ele who, well, already knows how to be an ele...

    ...and despite all that is written above; I feel there is a truth that dare not speak its name, that, to a large extent, Zoo's are still places where the general public come to gawp at exotic creatures for the financial benefit of the owners or the city and, in the words of the journalist, a Zoo without an elephant isn't much of a Zoo.

    As I have said before, given the numbers of elephants in trouble and out of work in the range states, given that we have a Governing body in CITES who could control and set minimum standards of care and of procurement, given that the animal rights groups and patriots are watching - I really don't see why that truth shouldn't be admitted. I don't feel that options of export should be dismissed out of hand, though I'd have thought AZAA would be reluctant to go through the process again given the trouble and controversy they fielded last time...

     ...and I do feel sorry for Auckland Zoo's administrators and keepers that their birthday girl's name is such a gift for any headline writer seeking a commercial conspiracy.
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Kashin the elephant turns 40

Sunday Star Times | Sunday, 02 November 2008
KASHIN THE elephant's snot is clear and gritty. "Blow into her trunk," instructs the zookeeper. "She wants to smell your breath."

Looking up an elephant's nose is like peering into twin surgical wounds. Pink and glistening tunnels, 1.6m long, containing more than 40,000 muscles, useful for pushing over logs, snuffling in the dirt and getting to know human visitors.

There are only three elephants in New Zealand. African-born Jumbo is currently in Nelson with the Loritz Circus. Kashin and her companion Burma, the Asian elephants living at Auckland Zoo, are the sole representatives of their species.

Kashin celebrates her 40th birthday next Sunday. Middle-aged by elephant standards, she suffers from arthritis, foot abscesses and skin ulcers. Keepers say her ability to recover from infections is diminishing. It is unlikely she will live to 50 and that leaves Auckland Zoo with a dilemma.

Modern captive animal practice dictates Burma must have companions; that once Kashin is gone, either multiple elephants must be imported to Auckland, or Burma must go to a new home, in a new country.

Is this the end of an era for elephants in New Zealand zoos?

Jonathan Wilcken, Auckland Zoo director, says it's too early to say. "But our default position would have to be we've got to give Burma what she needs in terms of companionship."

The zoo board has considered the issue in secret, at a public-excluded session of its August meeting, under the heading "Strategic implications of retaining elephants at Auckland Zoo".

In response to an Official Information Act request from the Sunday Star-Times, Wilcken said Kashin's health problems highlighted the need to plan carefully.

However, "the issue of future planning for such a species has clear commercial ramifications, and for this reason we are withholding details of the planning process".

He was no more forthcoming this week.

"We need to develop contingency plans. Clearly we're not going to be implementing contingency plans in advance of the contingency arising."

Kashin weighs in at more than three tonnes. She stands 3.2m high and eats up to 120kg of food a day (and poos out about 60kg of that). On her daily walk through the zoo grounds, she is a lumbering, rusty truck who doesn't like hills, but looks like she's smiling when she gets into the bush and starts browsing vegetation.

"Kashin is currently doing very well," Wilcken says. "There is no indication that any change to the current circumstances is imminent."

AUCKLAND ZOO is a member of the Australasian Zoo and Aquarium Association, which has developed a 50-year management plan for Asian elephants. The organisation says the animals are a key species because they are endangered (only 35,000 live in the wild, compared to 500,000 of their African counterparts) and face a very high risk of extinction (wild populations have declined by 80% in the past 60 years).

"Elephants are a much-loved species," says the association. "They are powerful ambassadors that assist in educating and engaging people in biodiversity and conservation."

And the kids love 'em. Last Labour Weekend Saturday, Auckland Zoo's elephant encounter packed out. Families broke out apples, bananas and umbrellas and settled in for lunch in front of Kashin. The birthday girl trumpeted and the crowd went "oooh" when she took a dip in her pool.

Heath Mitchell, eight, said his main impression of Kashin was "fat". Elephants, reported his youthful companions, had long noses, could push logs and were grey. Or brown. Or kind of black. No matter it was clear that for some visitors, a zoo without an elephant would not be much of a zoo.

Wilcken won't reveal Kashin's financial worth to his organisation. He won't even rank the cost of keeping elephants alongside other species. But across the Tasman, when Melbourne and Sydney's Taronga zoos expanded and upgraded to bring in new elephants from Thailand, they spent $13.5 million and $40 million, respectively. The move caused an uproar animal welfare groups called the plans "a commercial deal dressed up as an animal conservation effort" but the imports went ahead, and both zoos are now expecting baby elephants.

Auckland Zoo was part of that original importation plan, but had to turn down a young female after it became violent in quarantine. It couldn't take a bull, because it had no facilities to house it separately.

"In order to keep elephants as well as we do, it costs a reasonable amount of money," Wilcken says. "I think it's fair to say that zoos of the past perhaps didn't understand their needs as well as we do now... and the extent to which a zoo has to resource them... the elephant population we've got here is a remnant of past planning."

INTERNATIONALLY, ANIMAL rights groups are documenting moves to close elephant exhibits. New York's Bronx Zoo has announced that when two of its three specimens die, the remaining one will be sent to another zoo. California's Santa Barbara has a similar non-replacement policy. In 2001, London Zoo permanently relocated its three female Asian elephants and closed a 170-year-old exhibit. Wellington Zoo which received its first elephant in 1927 has not had one since 1983, when the much-loved Kamala died. Zoo literature says elephants should be ideally kept in herds of four or five as they are very social animals, and "Wellington Zoo does not have the space or resources to house elephants".

In the absence of other elephants, keepers play a crucial role. At Auckland Zoo, it's a minimum three-year commitment. "It's about that long before you really start to notice they like you, that they care about you," says Andrew Coers, elephant team leader.

Coers, 28, describes Kashin as "a bit of a queen mother". At the elephant encounter, he calls her "Kashi-bear" and uses a mix of Sri Lankan and made-up words to encourage her to nudge logs, spray herself with water and trumpet to Burma. But away from the public, at the top of the hill and into the bush at zoo's perimeter, it's more hands-off. The elephants munch grass and flick dust over their backs. They look happy.

"All the work we do down in the paddock, the training and spending time with these animals, is so we can take them out in the bush, and let them be elephants and have some time to themselves," says Coers.

"People don't tend to get to see a lot of this stuff, but the fact that it's happening is awesome... they need access to areas where they can do elephanty things."

Talk to an Aucklander about Kashin and invariably someone will remember riding her as a child. In fact, that was another elephant, Jamuna. Kashin is, however, the elephant on the ASB Bank money box scheme launched in 1964.

It was the bank that sponsored Kashin's arrival, in 1973, from a Thailand wildlife facility to the Old Elephant House (now a function centre).

It's a long way from that concrete enclosure to the pools, dust baths and bush walks Kashin enjoys today.

Coers says Auckland Zoo should not keep elephants for the sake of it. "My preference would be to see more, but it would have to be done properly, and there would have to be a successful breeding programme to be able to keep elephants here for a lot longer."

Kashin is too old to have children. Burma, 26, has scar tissue that makes artificial insemination difficult. `

`It would be very, very special for New Zealand to have baby elephants," says Coers.

"But nowadays it's getting harder and harder to bring any animal into the country."

It's pouring rain in the bush now. Kashin doesn't care. She lumbers further into the undergrowth. Next Sunday, weather permitting, she'll get a bath in the hippo pool that's being especially cleaned for her birthday and she'll eat a giant cake made of fruit and bran mash.

"Generally, elephants live to 50 to 70 years," says Coers. "But really, Kashin won't fall into that bracket because of her health issues. It's hard to put an actual two years or three years on it, but it could be any time.

"Kashin has touched so many people. One day, when we have to make decisions, it's going to be a pretty sad time for a lot of people. Not just those of us who look after her, but the whole community out there who support her."

Breakfast in the sky (no diamonds?)

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:23:00 GMT

As you know, we are well known for our tendency to accept any invitation proffered, especially if we feel there may be a free banana in it for us; so when the gilt edged envelope arrived recently to attend a breakfast on our very own Sunset Sala turned up on the camp's proverbial door mat (there is some speculation that I might be the camp's figurative door mat and it is well known that we don't have a literal door mat) you will not be surprised to learn we felt that we should make an effort, get dressed up early and get up there.

With the panoramic views of all three countries, with the rustle of bamboo in the breeze, with the slightly more urgent noise of bamboo between massive molars, with the storms rumbling below us - safe 'neath our macaranga leaf, perhaps I was in a romantic mood but it got me thinking, what better place to pop the question? - of course you wouldn't invite thirty of your best friends as our hosts had (would you? - this coming from a guy who proposed in the check-in queue at Charles de Gaulle) - then we could have breakfast in the sky with diamonds.

...the guys await the arrival of the first phase of the Toyota's best sales folks worldwide...

...s'not raining, honest, safe to sit down to your fried eggs, waffles and espresso...

...of course, if you were going to pop the question you might not require a staff of thousands, but perhaps an anniversary breakfast with your best friends?..

...this being a Four Seasons event, of course breakfast was laid on for the eles too - like I said, wherever there's a free banana or two, that's where we'll be.

The Pied Piper of Chiang Khong (Phu Ki leads the parade)

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 01:10:00 GMT

The word is out there on the dirt road, they're whispering in their Government meetings, if it is time for the temple parade and the village elders once again are rambling on about the good old days before the trees went, when there were elephants behind every bush and a parade wasn't a parade unless it was led by a bona fide be-tusked giant.

The word is out, if it is traditional, we have not much else to do and if you want to keep your Grandfathers happy, come and see Amp up at the big hotel - officially my terms are that it doesn't cost me anything but sleep, the elephant gets a tip of sugarcane and the mahouts get a tip of a more adaptable kind.

Of course, it always ends up costing me more than sleep as the truck driver has forgotten to fill up with fuel, the mahouts need lunch, a new uniform to look good, a new hat to look traditional and temples always need a donation (of a more adaptable kind) but it is always worth it to try and put elephants back in the forefront of local folks' minds.

The middle of October sees the end of Buddhist Lent, the three month period where the monks are supposed not to venture forth from their temples lest they tread on and kill the growing shoots bought abundantly about by the rains, the three months where the devout give up alcohol (as with Christian Lent in most cases for between seven to ten days - but at least they try), by the time the third full moon rolls around the monks are traditionally invited back out of their temples in a Krathin Ceremony, wherein they are prepared for the year ahead and all in the land - from HM the King on down - present them with new robes and other essentials.

It is also a good excuse for a parade and, as Grandfather incessantly tells you, a parade ain't a parade without an ele...

..Phu Ki is on the truck and off past the mulberry garden...

...and meets his adoring crowd - photo credit to K. Seng who is our chief roving mahout nowadays...

...and, with Ja at the controls, does his Pied Piper impression - of course leading them to the temple and out of harm's way.

Why we do what we do (those of a sensitive disposition look away now)

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 01:12:00 GMT

There are times when I may wonder at what we do here, not really doubt the effectiveness and purpose of bringing the elephants off the streets but wonder, when visiting the camps of families - not, perhaps, those camped under the roads in Bangkok but those in the outer towns.

    Elephants in waist high grass, their family camped around them, sugarcane bought in from the provinces, might there not be a place for this too; in a world where the elephant depends on tourism and the tourists are slowing down, isn't this an ancient essentially transient lifestyle adapted to the modern world?

    Certainly, during the wet season the adults that roam from town to town here in the North, camping in temples and farmers' donated old paddy, sticking to the back roads would seem to have a reasonable life, I met a very fat young - though alone in ele terms - ele on the beach in Krabi, very healthy and calm.

    In our rush to bring all elephants off the streets and with our well known shortage of land, sometimes I wonder if we can't allow viable alternatives and then a story like the one below comes along to remind me...

    ...the reality of modern Thailand is no place for an ele, of course we're all at risk of being hit by a car every time we cross the street (especially in Bangkok) but at least we know and understand the risks - whether we believe the poor owner's (don't forget he's just lost a son and an elephant, his family's future and their only asset - hard not to have sympathy) claim that he's only been down there for a couple of days - whether or not the driver was drunk (as many are at night), whether or not we have sympathy for the economic realities of an elephant lifestyle there is no doubt in my mind that Plai Bounmee should not have been on that street at night.

    As K. Soriada points out, elephants should be where they belong, the question she doesn't answer is where they belong - I know a few places, as it happens, where elephants and mahouts can live, give me more land and I'll show you some more.
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ACCIDENT

A seven-year-old male elephant and a 16-year-old boy were killed and two people injured when hit by a pick-up truck while crossing a road in Bangkok in the early hours of yesterday. The elephant, Phlai Boonmee, and the youth, identified only as Chit, died on the spot. Sitthichai Yiawaram, 12, suffered injuries to his head and Kongsit Thalerngsuk, 24, scrapes and bruising.
Phlai Boonmee, a seven-year-old bull elephant, died after being hit by a pick-up truck on Srinakarin road in the early hours of yesterday. The elephant was brought to Bangkok by its owner to beg for food and money.
The vehicle's driver, Surachai Sunthornpadakul, 40, had a cut under his eye. The injured people were taken to Vibhavadi Ram hospital.
The elephant's owner, Boonchan Yiawaram, 36, said he, his son Sitthichai and their neighbours came from Buri Ram two days ago to beg for food and money in Bangkok.
After roaming the streets near Lam Salee intersection in Bang Kapi district on Wednesday evening, they had returned to the place in Srinakarin road where they were staying, and were hit by the speeding vehicle as they crossed the road, Mr Boonchan said.
Suebsakul Khemthong said the driver was charged with reckless driving causing death and injury.
Eyewitnesses said the driver appeared to be drunk, Pol Lt-Col Suebsakul said.
Soraida Salwala, founder of the Friends of the Asian Elephant foundation, said the problems of elephants roaming the streets had gone on for too long.
The authorities paid only lip service to improving the welfare of the roaming elephants and the mahouts.
''This accident could have been prevented. Elephants should not roam about in cities. They should stay where they belong,'' Ms Soraida said.
She would ask Bangkok Governor Apirak Kosayodhin to make sure Bangkok is free of roaming elephants.
She was also seeking legal avenues for action against people involved in abusing elephants and against high-ranking officials who turn a blind eye to the problem

Elephants in the popular imagination: Feted and confounded in equal, undeserved, measure...

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 01:10:00 GMT

...not usually being one to take offence from what I see in the popular press, being, as it happens, one that pretends not to have time to read the popular press, I will now blow my carefully built cover to bring to your attention a couple of throwaway images that caught my eye yesterday.

Firstly, without wanting to get after the Tourism Authority of Thailand too much, without quibbling with their use of elephants as the face of Thailand and not wanting to deny that elephants are the best four by four by far (to borrow someone else's tag line) whoever came up with the zero carbon emissions idea has obviously not spent an afternoon in my office-above-the-babies or stood behind Boun Na as she prepares herself to climb the hill.

Methane, if I remember my A-level Chemistry, is a basic hydrocarbon (CH4) and is certainly emitted here - eles must take some blame...

...but not all of it - I thought the following, from the Bangkok Post, was a little unfair.

Remembering old skills for the babies and the environment (once a logger, always a logger)

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 05:54:00 GMT

What with the price of oil going one way and the stock markets going the other, the sea level is rising and the dollar's dropping it is time for each of us to think of what we can do to help the global situation so, when visiting the new baby elephant camp project in the old Anantara vegetable farm, I spotted several diminutive work men doing their bit labouring under large logs my first reaction wasn't to go and get the tractor to help them, but to think of my several, already fueled, tractor alternatives.

    It is also a well worn truism that the devil finds work for idle trunks and I do have to admit that I was thinking a little of my ladies back in the other camp toying with sugarcane on a quiet day in September - well it turns out that it hasn't been so long since the ladies were illegally logging in Thailand or logging illegally in Burma and though they've put on a few pounds - a little over-fueled if you like - they performed admirably and saved not only fuel and the environment but also the backs of some small construction workers.

We don't have any logging gear but the boys are experts so Boo See gets dressed up in an improvised fashion...

...note, it takes a couple of people to lift these logs...

...but Boo See can pull five (later six) with ease.

    Popping them into place with her nose!

    After a couple of runs Boun Na took over the pulling duties and Boo See was the arranging and stacking, but sometimes life is just so much easier when you work as a team!

Shocking tinsel and free-roaming eles.

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 03:25:00 GMT

It is no secret, particularly to my mahouts, that I would love to see the eles here at Anantara and Four Seasons have greater freedom - particularly the babies. Some of the mahouts and owners agree with me and let their eles have pretty much the run of any area I can provide (my lack of ability to provide a large area is a recurring frustration) while some are still worried to let their babies roam or be left too far from camp at night.

    I have long known of the Royal Sponsored elephant re-introduction programme on several sites around Thailand, so when, on a recent trip to Lampang, I got the chance to visit their local site I grabbed the opportunity.

    I have to admit I had fairly low expectations, knowing the Lampang area pretty well - I thought - lots of denuded National Park style forest but criss-crossed by roads and villages.

    We drove down through a Government teak plantation, thirty-year wood in the process of being thinned out, and into an open grassland area and were presented with a vista - and what a vista, the range of hills that make up the border between Lampang and Phrae provinces spreading out before us in an almost 180 degree panorama.

    "Sorry we can't show you any elephants, but they're all out there somewhere" - fine by me.

    Unbeknown to anyone, it seems, and unadvertised, about ten years ago they let nine elephants go out there, now almost completely wild they are loosely tracked by a couple of mahouts who just keep an eye on them and steer them away from trouble.

    We drove back into the teak and for miles through rice paddies, along irrigation dykes and through private rubber plantations - they explained to us that the water was put in by the project, along with a reservoir, to pacify local folks for the loss of 'their' forest to the elephants - a great idea except that now, ten years on, businesses are drawn to the area specifically for the 'free' water and now the reservoirs, originally for the elephants, are beginning to run dry.

    After an hour of driving we came to the second site, in a forest contiguous with the first, and to something more applicable to our project, where, despite our best efforts, we are never likely to have 1,000,000 acres of Government forest at our disposal - at the second site we were shown the holding pens where the elephants get their first taste of going back into the wild, excitingly for us, the area is strung with some home improvised electric fence, solar driven and, somewhat festively, hung with silver tinsel.

    Even more exciting, it is reasonably cheap to construct and seems to work for (or against) domestic elephants.

    They let the new eles go in small paddocks of forest about 1km square, the mahouts stay close by at night, finding them every day at least once, just to check, and the rest of the time they get to roam 'as wild'.

    So, lacking shame, we took a lot of photos - we'll begin our trial run as soon as the new baby elephant camp is finished and, fingers crossed on the new land where ever that may be, look to roll out the idea in a whole new project.

    A dry reservoir in the wet season...

...Wildlife Conservation student Karen Kelly studies the board of released elephants...

...the shameless stealing of ideas and the wonders of cameras in mobile phones...

...the mahouts offer treats through the tinsel...

...Dr Cherry, our vet and Dr Pap, last year's vet inspect one of the yet-to-be-dehabilitated elephants and find an eye infection to be clearing.

    We even made it onto their blog...
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Thursday, September 11, 2008

Visitors visit a group of elephants which is rehabilitating in the electric fence project2. กลุ่มพังซาร่า พังพรรษา พังเพชรา สีดอภาธร และพลายบริบูรณ์ ที่ปรับพฤติกรรมอยู่ในรั้วไฟฟ้าโครงการ 2

Mr.Roberts is studying our self-sufficiency electric fence style. คุณ John กำลังศึกษาวิธีการเชื่อมต่อกระแสไฟฟ้าในการทำรั้วไฟฟ้าแบบพอเพียง

Mr. John Roberts, a group of The Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation and Khun Prasob Thipprasert, a Special Pachyderm Advisor of our foundation visit The Elephant Reintroduction Foundation at Lampang Camp. คุณ John Roberts และคณะจาก The Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation พร้อมด้วย คุณประสพ ทิพย์ประเสริฐ ได้เข้าเยี่ยมโครงการคืนช้างสู่ธรรมชาติ จังหวัดลำปาง โดยได้เยี่ยมชมแคมป์ 1 บริเวณ โรงพยาบาลช้าง พลับพลาพระราชพิธีปล่อยช้าง ลานพิธีบริจาคช้าง และสุสานช้าง จากนั้นก็เดินทางสู่แคมป์ 2 เพื่อเข้าเยี่ยมชมโครงการรั้วไฟฟ้าแบบพอเพียง ทั้งโครงการ 1 และโครงการ 2 และช้างที่ทางมูลนิธิฯ กำลังปรับพฤติกรรมอยู่ภายในบริเวณรั้วไฟฟ้า