Tourist craze for elephants in Thailand

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Thai mahouts ride tourist craze for elephants Mon Nov 26, 2007 1:23pm IST

 

 

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By Gillian Murdoch

 

SURIN, Thailand (Reuters Life!) - Trudging the city streets with a hungry

four-tonne elephant at your heels is not a job for everyone.

 

But add a cute baby, and tourists flock to pet and feed the grey-brown

giants, making the plodding pachyderms more of an investment than a curse

for modern mahouts working in Thailand, one of Asia's top holiday

destination.

 

With logging banned in 1989, more babies are hitting streets and trekking

camps to meet tourism-driven demand for docile, good-looking animals, said

the director of the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre, Richard Lair.

 

Big, aggressive bull elephants, who were excellent loggers were once the

most prized, Lair said. Now " gorgeous young female calves " and cute babies

with hairy heads and the ability to quickly learn tricks are the most

sought-after.

 

" It's calves that are coming in now, " he said. " They weren't attractive in

the past, as basically you have to wait twenty years for them to grow up and

start logging " .

 

TALENTED TOTS

 

For seventeen-year Thai mahout old Aim, from the northeast city of Surin,

five-year old Leo's dancing and painting skills were evidence that spending

500,000 baht ($15,770) on the baby elephant three years ago was a good

investment.

 

" He could already do some tricks before I bought him. I had a good feeling

about him, " said Aim, who goes by only one name and whose father is also in

the elephant business.

 

 

 

Spending nine months of the year at an elephant village near town, the pair

sell rides and perform in the country's largest elephant festival, the Surin

Elephant Roundup, every November.

 

 

 

During peak tourist months from December to February they supplement their

income on the elephant show circuit at the east coast seaside resort town of

Pattaya.

 

 

 

" We walk around, selling sugarcane. Just for entering the show elephants get

1,000 baht ($32) or 2,000 baht. If they play football they get 2,000 baht,

but Leo can't play, " he said.

 

 

 

Despite being banned from streetwalking in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, roving

elephants are relatively common on city outskirts.

 

 

 

Many street elephants work from daybreak late into the night, begging for

small change outside restaurants and nightspots.

 

 

 

Aside from periodic crackdowns, the lumbering lawbreakers and are more

likely to be moved on by authorities than fined.

 

 

 

But these difficulties have not deterred mahouts like Aim. " I like the

freedom of being a mahout, " he said.

 

 

 

" Having a girlfriend is difficult, but I have Leo all the time so it's not

lonely " .

 

Casual elephant encounters are easy to find at trekking camps and public

festivals such as those in Surin, where mahouts control the animals with a

series of commands and a sharp pointed hook, called the angkus, as they

weave among crowds.

 

 

 

" It's great, " said German nurse Sonya Stiegler, 29, as she stood surrounded

by dozens of elephants snacking on sugarcane and fruits laid out on trestle

tables at the pre-festival " elephant buffet " , held on closed-off streets in

the middle of Surin.

 

 

 

But being so close to the elephants and their mahouts also raises questions,

she said.

 

 

 

" I saw one mahout here bumping his stick on the elephant's head and I don't

like that. They say they're like a member of the family but I saw a baby

elephant bleeding on the head where he'd been hit. This is not how you treat

family, " Stiegler added.

 

 

 

After a high-profile anti-elephant abuse campaign by animal rights group

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in 2002 called for tourists to

boycott Thailand, image remains important to the million dollar industry.

 

 

 

But as Thailand's tourist boom continues, many mahouts are confident about

hitching their prospects to the popular pachyderms, even if their elephants

are not so easy on the eye.

 

 

 

Myanmar mahout Boonchu's elephant Lilly became addicted to amphetamines

given to her by her previous owners to make her work around the clock in an

illegal logging camp.

 

Now the wrinkled ex-junkie is a star at Chiang Mai's Elephant Nature Park

rescue centre, he said.

 

 

 

" Lilly is slow-moving, but everybody loves her. "