| Elephant in Bangkok looking for work. Copyright © Ken Friedman, 1997 |
Forget the dilemma of endangered spotted owls of the Pacific Northwest or the dilemma of the secretive marbled murelet (a sea bird) in California, which threatens the livelihood of American loggers. What about the poor elephants of Thailand? Now here's a true environmental dilemma — a case of environmental protection threatening elephants.
Elephants, once the symbol of the emperor, have always been popular in Thailand. Tourists can buy carved wooden elephants varying in size from palm-sized to something the size of a Volkswagon beetle automobile. Elephant figures also are found made of brass and cloth, and as jade pendants, pins and earrings. You can buy silk and cotton pillow covers with elephant motifs, sequined elephant wall hangings (made in Burma), elephant T-shirts, elephant ash trays and you name it.
Real elephants (you can easily tell the difference) used to work in Thailand's logging industry, but no longer. Anti-logging laws passed in 1988-89 and the downsizing of timber operations as a result of deforestation have helped cause elephant unemployment. They have also lost their jobs to mechanization — trucks that can move the logs once handled by elephants.
| Retired logging elephants now work a side show for tourists to earn food money. Photo taken near Chaing Mai in northern Thailand. Copyright © Ken Friedman, 1997 |
Besides losing their jobs, Thailand's estimated 3,000 to 4,000 domestic and fewer than 2,000 wild elephants also face a general food shortage. Thailand had about 11,000 domestic elephants in the mid 1960s and about 30,000 wild elephants. There isn't enough grass or fruit for them to eat in the many poor villages. Elsewhere, food is made scarce where reforestation projects plant exotic nonfood trees, such as eucalyptus for the pulp and paper industry, or where natural wetlands are converted to other uses such as farming. The result is hungry elephants that compete with poor villagers for food, sometimes bellying up to the village garbage dump. When hunger makes elephants behave wildly and they threaten villagers, some villagers retaliate by killing them.
So what's a poor, unemployed domesticated elephant to do? Just what many unemployed people do — head for the big city, in this case Bangkok, Thailand's capital. Elephant trainers from northern Thailand bring their elephants to Bangkok several times a year — a trip of several hundred miles. Other elephants come to town as semipermanent residents. Some put on street-corner performances for residents and tourists. Many help their mahouts (trainers) sell fruit, which earns about $20 (US) a day. One benefit from selling fruit is that city dwellers often feed some to the elephant, which can eat from 650 to 800 pounds a day. This is called selling your fruit and eating it too.
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