Holly Wanlin thinks about elephants often, especially on World Elephant Day.
It’s Aug. 12 this year.
Wanlin, owner of Shawanda Rocks Crystals and Gems Wellness Centre in Kelowna, volunteered for two weeks at an elephant sanctuary at Surin, a small Thai village near the Cambodian border.
She also volunteered at elephant sanctuaries in Northern Thailand, and in India.
This is Holly’s story:
There was an attempt to pull the elephants out of tourism, so the mahouts (elephant tenders) were built a house, the elephants a structure. The queen of Thailand outlawed logging to gain incentives for the mahouts to bring their elephants here where the tourists would pay them to help with their elephants.
The queen also gave them a monthly subsidy to develop this program.
I was assigned an elephant named Kumsun, a 33-year-old pregnant grandma. I walked her to…
