Half-Blind Elephant Abused for Tourist Rides in Thailand

Originally published 2018-02-02.

In January 2018, Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand (WFFT) shared undercover footage from a tourist attraction in southern Thailand showing a female elephant, blind in one eye and with poor sight in the other, being made to carry tourists on her back. According to reports on the video, she was struck on the face, trunk, head and feet when she did not obey, and was kept on chains when she was not working. The attraction was not named.

The footage is upsetting, but it points to a wider and well-documented problem: how elephants used for rides and shows are trained, kept and worked. If you are planning a trip to Thailand and wondering whether elephant rides are cruel, or how to tell an ethical sanctuary from a camp with a nicer name, this guide sets out what is known.

What the undercover video showed

The clip was circulated by WFFT, a rescue organisation founded in 2001 by Edwin Wiek that runs a wildlife hospital and elephant refuge. The Facebook video has since been removed, so we cannot show it here, but descriptions published at the time agree on the main points:

• The elephant had very limited vision, yet worked long days carrying paying visitors in a howdah, the bench seat strapped to an elephant's back.
• Handlers used force, including blows to sensitive areas such as the trunk and feet, to make her follow commands.
• Between rides she was chained so tightly that she could barely move.

Who filmed it and when has not been made public, and we have not seen any response from the venue. Even so, what the clip shows fits closely with patterns that welfare investigators have recorded across Asia.

(The Facebook video originally embedded here is no longer available.)

How elephants are "broken" for tourism

An elephant is a wild animal, even when born in captivity. To make a young elephant accept riders and commands, traditional training in Thailand and Myanmar has often used a process called phajaan, sometimes translated as "the crush." The calf is separated from its mother, confined in a tight wooden pen and tied so it cannot move, kick or swing its head. Through restraint, hunger and punishment, handlers aim to break its will until it submits.

Veterinarians at World Animal Protection have argued that any activity involving close contact with an elephant, such as riding, bathing with tourists or painting, depends on this kind of harsh early conditioning, and that the cruelty does not stop once the animal is trained. Many trainers and some camps dispute that every elephant goes through the full crush, and newer reward-based methods do exist. But investigators keep finding the old techniques in use, and undercover footage from 2019 showed crushing still being practised in Thailand.

Chains, hooks and close confinement are common in venues that offer rides. Image via Pinterest.

What research says about elephant tourism

World Animal Protection's report Taken for a Ride, published in 2017, summed up years of visits to more than 350 elephant venues in seven Asian countries, including Thailand, India, Laos, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Malaysia. Of the 3,837 elephants assessed, about 93 percent lived in conditions the authors rated as inadequate, and around 63 percent in severely inadequate conditions. Only about 7 percent were in venues judged to offer high welfare, and these were mostly observation-only.

Common problems included:

• elephants chained for long periods on hard concrete, often under a short chain;
• little or no contact with other elephants, although they are highly social animals;
• limited veterinary care and poor diets;
• noise and crowds, and work in strong heat without enough shade or water.

The report also noted that visitor demand drives the trade: in 2016, riding was the most popular elephant activity among tourists surveyed, while simply watching elephants was the least.

Rides, shows and close-contact activities are the most profitable and the hardest on the animals. Image via The Ecologist.

Why Thailand has so many captive elephants

The elephant is Thailand's national animal and has been part of the country's history for centuries, in war, royal ceremony and logging. When Thailand banned commercial logging in natural forests at the end of the 1980s, thousands of working elephants and their mahouts lost their jobs. Many moved into tourism, at first begging in city streets and later working in camps and shows.

Today captive elephants in Thailand far outnumber wild ones. Estimates put captive animals at about 3,800 in 2017, against a few thousand in the wild. Under a law dating from 1939, domestic elephants are classed as beasts of burden, similar to horses or oxen, and the law sets few welfare standards. Investigators have also documented wild-caught calves from Myanmar being smuggled across the border and registered as captive-born.

When tourism collapsed during the COVID-19 pandemic, close to 4,000 captive elephants in Thailand were reported to be at risk of hunger, which showed how dependent the animals have become on visitors' money.

Myths about elephant rides

"Elephants are strong, so a few riders do no harm." Welfare vets point out that an elephant's spine has bony projections pointing upward and is not built to carry weight on top. A heavy howdah with several adults, repeated all day, can cause sores and long-term injury.

"Riding camps help conservation." Captive tourist elephants are almost never released into the wild, and World Animal Protection found that very few venues offered any real education. Conservation of wild elephants depends on protecting forests and reducing conflict with farmers.

"A place called a sanctuary must be ethical." The word is not regulated. Some venues that still offer rides or bathing sessions call themselves sanctuaries or rescue centres.

"Without tourism the elephants would starve." Captive elephants do need income for food and care. That is why welfare groups encourage visitors to pay for observation-based experiences rather than boycott elephants altogether.

How to see elephants responsibly

If you want to see elephants in Thailand without adding to their suffering, a few checks help:

• No riding, no shows, no painting, no bathing with tourists. A genuinely elephant-friendly venue is observation-only.
• Look at the animals, not the brochure. Elephants should move freely in natural surroundings, mix with other elephants and not be chained for most of the day.
• Watch the handlers. Bullhooks, sticks or constant commands in front of visitors are a warning sign.
• Consider wild elephants. National parks such as Khao Yai and Kui Buri offer chances to see wild herds with a licensed guide.
• Ask questions and read independent reviews. Ask where the elephants came from and whether new calves are bred for the venue.

What the footage asks of visitors

Videos like the one shared by WFFT are hard to watch, but they put a face on a trade that most tourists only see from the top of a howdah. The half-blind elephant's story is not unusual; it is what happens when demand for close contact meets an animal that cannot be safely made to provide it. The most direct way travellers can change that is by choosing not to pay for rides and by supporting places where elephants are allowed to simply be elephants.

Sources: One Green Planet, January 2018: Undercover footage shows abuse of blind trekking elephant; Faunalytics summary of World Animal Protection's Taken for a Ride (2017); Wikipedia: Phajaan; Wikipedia: Elephants in Thailand; Wikipedia: Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand; footage: Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand; images via Pinterest and The Ecologist.