Why you shouldn’t take pride in an elephant ride
Elephants are intelligent, strong, and charismatic animals. They are the largest living mammals with great memory and can form strong bonds. While these beautiful animals are meant to spend their lives happy and free, over 3,000 elephants are being exploited in the global tourism industry today.
Every captive elephant is subject to a brutal training process known as ‘the crush.’ To break their spirit, they are torn from their mothers, isolated, chained, starved, and beaten until they are submissive enough to perform distressing tourist activities.
It is a lifetime of horror for a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ holiday experience. If tourists knew about the horrific cruelty behind the scenes, they surely would think twice before spending their hard-earned money to finance such cruelty.
Although elephants have been exploited by humans for countless years, a better life for them is possible. As most captive elephants cannot be released back into the wild, an elephant-friendly venue is their best option.
At an elephant-friendly venue, elephants have the freedom to roam, graze and bathe while socialising, rather than being used for strenuous rides, kept in chains, and exposed to the sun all day. It allows observational activities only with no direct interaction between humans and elephants.
Because of your support, we were able to partner with some of the world’s most influential travel companies and help transition two tourist venues in Thailand into elephant-friendly venues. This has shown that there is an elephant-friendly way to be commercially viable for elephant camp owners, encouraging them to value and care for their animals.
Together, we can continue to push the travel industry to rebuild for the better until the last chain is broken.