About an hour’s drive north of Chiang Mai, Thailand, the park comprises 250 acres tucked among forested hills along the banks of the Mae Taeng River. At the time of my visit, more than 120 rescued elephants lived there. Some of them were physically damaged from injuries sustained doing illegal logging work or tourism detail—hauling around tourists all day at the behest of a mahout who prods them with a sharp tool (something tour operators often falsely claim can’t be felt through the elephant’s skin) or worse.
All of the elephants were emotionally damaged, kept from the rich community life normal to the species. Some had been subjected to incredible cruelty, underfed, or kept in squalid, uncomfortable living conditions. New arrivals need time to adjust, to find their way into the welcoming herd after a solitary lifetime. In some cases that is 70-plus years; elephants live about as long as humans do if living conditions favor it. And they do here.
Passion Project
The park and its affiliated Save Elephant Foundation are the life mission of Saengduean Chailert. She fittingly goes by the name Lek, which means “tiny” in Thai. This diminutive woman with a heart the size of the creatures she loves took me on a walk. As soon as we entered the field, elephants came running to greet her. There’s nothing like a half dozen elephants charging at you and bugling a little to get your pulse pumping. But they were gentle. The elephants encircled her, and one pulled Khun Lek in with her trunk and held the human like a child to her breast. [Editor’s note: “Khun” is a polite honorific in Thai, similar to Mr. or Mrs., and applied respectfully to everyone.]
Born in 1961, Khun Lek is from the Khmu tribe, an ethnic group living in Laos and part of northern Thailand. She told me she was never supposed to get an education because she was a woman. But she did, walking many miles to school each day from a home in a village without roads, let alone electricity. As a child, she witnessed the violent abuse of an injured elephant forced to move timber. The painful cries of the animal haunted her. She became passionate about the plight of elephants.
Khun Lek rescued her first elephant in 1991. She convinced a friend to open an elephant sanctuary, a business that wasn’t a circus show or riding experience. But this endeavor struggled to draw clients. When the friend gave up and turned to the usual elephant shows, one of his competitors shot him. The perpetrator was arrested and Khun Lek’s friend lost his arm. The whole situation was a stark reminder of the literal danger of challenging the status quo. Yet Khun Lek persisted.
Meeting the Elephants
I joined a group of fellow travelers. Our guide took us through the central open-air pavilion, which has a gift shop, a staging area for sorting and prepping donated food, and a kitchen and dining area that serves vegan meals to guests. We were briefed and taken out on a walk through the gate into the area occupied by the herd, learning about the complex relationships among the elephants, the matriarchal society, its grandmother figures, and nannies.Spend some time with elephants, and you’ll start to see them as individuals. They all have names. They all have stories about how they lost an eye or broke a hip or were beaten for not working hard enough. Some were forced to breed at a young age and then had the babies taken away.
A grandmother stood in the shade, calmly eating a boatload of sugar cane. This is Jokia, I was told. When she grew tired and refused to work, her former mahout beat her using a bullhook and blinded her in one eye. The other eye became infected, and no care was provided for her, leaving her completely blind. Another elephant had a shortened, malformed foot from the day she stepped on a landmine, still a danger along the borders here in Southeast Asia. Yet another hobbled along with a bulging hip problem that’s painful to even look at, the result of a crushing logging injury.
It sounds sentimental or anthropomorphic when they’re called “grandmas,” “nannies,” and “caretakers,” but it’s accurate. Elephants are highly expressive creatures with a wide range of emotions and a capacity for empathy. They celebrate births and mourn their dead. When new elephants arrive, the older ones bond with the younger ones to just look after them. The babies and the teenagers play and get into mischief, while the adults occasionally have to keep them in line or come running when they cry out. All of them spend time playing in the mud or throwing the red dust across their backs for protection from the sun and bugs. A loud bang or gunshot in the distance compels them to race into an outward-facing circle, their smaller, more vulnerable members sheltered in the middle. For them, this is a safe haven; for the visitor, this is nature on display in an outdoor classroom.
“Really, a focal point of our work project here is to educate,” Darrick Thompson, Khun Lek’s husband, said. He designed many of the structures and works tirelessly to maintain and improve the sanctuary. “Basically, the main thing is to learn about elephants; to learn about the captive and the wild situations, so [visitors] can be more knowledgeable and present that when they go home.”
The sanctuary isn’t only for elephants; it cares for more than 5,000 animals, from water buffalo and pigs to rescued dogs and cats. That’s a lot of creatures demanding care and sustenance.
The Elephants Marching Home
The park has a second plot of land that’s unconnected to the rest of the park. Surrounded by the SkyWalk, an elevated platform that puts visitors above the elephants, it’s a partly shaded, peaceful enclosure for a group of elephants that walks along the river bank to get here each morning, then returns to the main camp at night. Back at the main compound, visitors gather on a walking bridge over the river to watch them return, and the elephants walk past underneath. They reached their trunks up as though offering a high five to the people looking down, but they were merely using their highly developed sense of smell to “see” who was there.Three adults of the group arrived early and were about to walk through the park gate, but stopped and milled about by the water while making a low rumbling. Downriver, another elephant blew its trumpet, and these three broke out into the blaring horns of the apocalypse, enough to send chills down my spine. They took off on a charge back along the river.
I turned to a guide who was watching with us. “What was that all about?”
Getting Involved
Half- and full-day trips from Chiang Mai include meals and guided walks among the herd. In the afternoon, you can see them being bathed in the river, a necessity for elephants that don’t have the benefit of time spent trekking through the forest where branches would normally clean their skin and prevent infections. I chose a two-day visit, stayed in simple hotel-like accommodations, and woke up to the sounds of elephants.A volunteer program lasts a week and includes a variety of tasks, such as unloading food donations, working in the kitchen, making elephant rescue-date celebration “cakes” out of fruits, vegetables, and rice, cleaning shelters and tanks, painting and light maintenance, and gathering stones for building things such as the gabion posts that protect the trees from the hungry elephants. Then, during free time at night, visitors can hang with dogs and cats or perhaps learn some Thai.
Kim Schneider of Michigan spent a week as a volunteer. “You learn how to be an advocate for elephants and share that with other people,” she said. “But what you get with staying for a week is something very personal, an almost spiritual connection with these animals.”
That goes for volunteers, too. “There were people from all over the world.” Volunteer teams bonded over tasks, forming lines to toss melons from a truck to storage, singing songs, and playing as they worked. “And while you’re doing that, elephants are walking by and peeking in at you.”
She and her fellow volunteers had little in common, but they had a “shared powerful experience” and remained in touch. “I’ve never had a trip like that, that impacted me so much.”
Doing the Right Thing
I happened to be there when they rescued Namthip, who traveled hundreds of miles in 24 hours, standing up in the back of the sanctuary’s elephant-friendly truck. Thanks to social media, many Thais had lined up along the route to provide food for the elephant. The cost of paying off the owner exceeded $20,000, and on hand for the welcoming at the park was a woman who had raised money for this rescue with her office mates.Young Namthip is unusual. More than 70 percent of the elephants are as old as 80 years when they are rescued. They’re still being forced to work until they are physically unable to do so. When Khun Lek picked them up, they could barely mount the truck. “Their legs are very weak and their eyes can’t see much and they can’t hear ... they walk with no balance,” she said. “Can you imagine that? If we are old, forced to do slave work ... desperate for freedom?”
One might wonder if it is worth all this effort and cost to bring them here if they will only live a short time longer. “I think about my grandmother. I think about myself,” she said, unflinchingly. “I will take them. If they stay with us one week, one month, it’s better that they come and die among people who love them, rather than dying as someone beats them or while people ride on them.”
Attitudes have changed since Khun Lek first started preaching against elephant riding, and though it’s still legal in a country where the endangered Asian elephant is culturally revered, the practice is increasingly frowned upon by sustainable and humane travel organizations and many travelers themselves. Elephant Nature Park stopped allowing visitors to bathe elephants, noting that visitors were unintentionally getting debris in elephants’ eyes. Visitor numbers declined by 40 percent, Thompson estimates, but then “it surged back up as the idea earned respect.”
In the end, Elephant Nature Park is all about the elephants’ needs and fulfillment, preserving their dignity without reducing them to entertainment for humans. We are simply fortunate witnesses.
“I want them to receive love and care from us, to understand another side of the human, that someone loves them,” Khun Lek said. “I want them to die with dignity, no chain on their leg and no hook in front of their vision before they die.”
If You Go
Find out more about visiting, volunteering, or donating to Elephant Nature Park and Save Elephant Foundation. Their website also lists other ethical “Saddle Off” elephant sanctuaries in the region. The foundation also opened Cambodia Wildlife Sanctuary, 32,000 acres near the Kulen Promtep Wildlife Sanctuary, north of Angkor Wat, Cambodia.Recent torrential rains in northern Thailand caused major flooding, and on Oct. 3, the waters of the Mae Taeng River rose quickly to engulf Elephant Nature Park. Mahouts and staff worked hard and fast to move the elephants (and dogs and other resident animals) to higher ground. Unfortunately, two elephants, Ploy Thong and Faa Sai, were swept away by the raging river and drowned.
The park is closed for tourist visits while clean-up continues, but donations are helping and volunteers, including the U.S. Consul General of Chiang Mai Lisa Buzenas and her son, have taken part in the recovery work. Watch their website’s calendar for visit opportunities to open up again.
