Bangkok's Roaming Elephants to be Returned to Their Jungle Homes

Posted by Mari Nicholson Jul 4, 2009

Once again Thailand’s elephants are in the news. The Bangkok authorities want to send the current roaming pachyderms back to the jungle but it is proving a somewhat difficult task.

These elephants that the visitors see idling outside shopping malls, lumbering through Bangkok’s traffic, and being fed too many bananas, too much sugar-cane, and touched for good luck (and as a way of their owner making a living) were once proud animals working in the northern forests. A logging ban in the late 1980’s made them redundant in forestry work and their owners have made the trek south to Bangkok to try and eek out a living for themselves, their families and their elephants.

They have been trafficked into the city from the northern states, and even from neighbouring Burma, sometimes by their owners who themselves are redundant, and sometimes by gangs who see another way of making a living in the city. Walking underneath an elephant is supposed to bring good luck and many people on their way to or from work at night at happy to pay a few coins to change their fortune. As well as this, the gangs sell supposedly ivory trinkets, but these are more likely to be made from elephant bone or even plastic.

It is sad to see these huge beasts lumbering through the grid-locked traffic, an environment guaranteed to affect their health. The traffic police wear masks in the city as do many of the workers, small protection against the pollution, but the elephants have no such defense. To be fair, neither do their mahouts, poverty stricken villagers to a man – and woman.

Roaming elephants cause accidents, especially at night, not only to cars, trucks and pedestrians, but to themselves. Bangkok’s notorious pot-holes cause many a broken leg to the huge beasts.

But in March last, the authorities came up with a plan. They are hoping that groups will adopt an elephant and relocate it to the countryside. Estimated at 500,000 baht (£10,000 or $14,600 at current rates) several groups have already stepped up and paid to have at least half of the city’s 200 elephants returned to a better life.

The owners are encouraged to start a business with the money and they must accept any reasonable offer. Bangkok Governor Khun Sukhumphan Boriphat has promised that the rest will be returned within a year.

Microchips have been inserted into the elephants so that their whereabouts can be tracked and so that they cannot be returned to the city. It is hoped they can be taught to search the forests (or what is left of them) for their food, but whether this will succeed or not is a moot point – decades of being fed sugar cane and bananas without any struggle to obtain it may have made the elephants lazy.

The Thai elephant is the symbol of the country and should be treated with respect. Visitors should remember that these animals should be sleeping at night, not parading down Sukhamvit for the amusement of tourists.