With tourism at a standstill, elephants in Thailand continue to be the forgotten victims of the pandemic. Despite signs of an economic bounce back, the future of tourism still remains uncertain. World Animal Protection understood the need to satisfy the immediate needs of these elephants and since April has supported over 70 elephants, and their mahouts, in 11 camps.
But the current situation has shown the negative effects of having these endangered creatures depending on tourists for their survival. Against better advice the dependency of captive elephants on profit through tourism has grown substantially in the last decade. In fact, more than half of today’s elephants were born after the logging ban and were bred specifically for commercial tourism. From 2010 to this year the number of captive tourism elephants in Thailand has increased by 70%. This contradicts…
