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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Photos: Thailand’s out-of-work elephants in crisis | Tourism

In Thailand’s northeastern village of Ban Ta Klang, Siriporn Sapmak starts her day by doing a livestream of her two elephants on social media. She does this to raise money to survive.

The 23-year-old, who has been taking care of elephants since she was in school, points her phone at the animals as she feeds them bananas and they walk around behind her family home.

Siriporn says she can raise about 1,000 baht ($27.46) in donations from several hours of livestreaming on TikTok and YouTube, but that is only enough to feed her two elephants for one day.

It is a new, and insecure, source of income for the family, who before the pandemic earned money by doing elephant shows in the Thai city of Pattaya. They top up their earnings by selling fruit.

Like thousands of other elephant owners around the country, the Sapmak family had to return to their home village as the pandemic decimated…

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