In Phuket, the southernmost tourist attraction in Thailand, there is a tourist experience program called "Elephant Swim", which attracts many tourists. Visitors sip the mango smoothie while watching the waves lap on the baby elephants on the shore. In addition, you can take a photo with the elephant for only 500 yuan, the mahout will "very intimately" help tourists ride on the top of the elephant's head or nose, and the photographer will use the camera to help tourists capture the "beautiful" moment.
Before the pandemic, elephant tourism projects were very popular with tourists, according to statistics from Thailand's tourism department, elephant tourism generates about 6 billion yuan in revenue for Thailand every year, and many Thai people rely on elephant tourism to make a fortune.
However, the joy of tourists and the increase in income of the scenic spot are based on the suffering of elephants.
Elephants are often forced to paint on canvas with their noses, hold a hat on their front feet and balance their back feet, and swim with visitors. Even, in order to make the elephant show more interesting, the mahout often let the elephant carry the elephant on his back, which in the long run caused great damage to the elephant's body, and the spine of the many elephants was severely deformed.
To familiarize elephants with humans, trainers often use so-called "squeezing," in which baby elephants are separated from mothers, caged and tied up to force females to interact with humans.
At the elephant swimming pool, after a day of training, eight female elephants climb a winding flight of stairs back to their cages, where their ankles are locked. What's more, when the mahout is stressed, he will whip the elephant fiercely, using the elephant as an object of venting, and to the mahout, the heart-rending cry of the elephant is simply beautiful music.
More serious than the pain of flesh and skin is the destruction of elephants' hearts by mahouts, some elephants have been chained to elephant camps for years, they have forgotten what happiness and freedom are, and when animal protection volunteers rescue them, they seem reluctant to leave, maybe they have adapted to life in chains!
Mahouts abuse baby elephants
In 2014, Thailand introduced the Animal Welfare Act to protect the country's wild elephants. But strangely, the law makes it illegal to release captive elephants into the wild, and even elephants rescued from abuse must continue to be kept in captivity. Captive elephants can be traded, bred and used for tourism. Thai officials later responded that the captive elephants had learned to rely on humans and lacked the skills to survive in the wild. But many people still feel very puzzled by this response.
The pandemic has made the situation of captive elephants worse, with the cost of raising an elephant for a month costing about US$300, and many elephants starving to death due to travel restrictions and no income from tourist attractions.
Now, with pandemic restrictions easing and tourists starting to return, various elephant spots in Thailand are eager to open again. The first to resume operations was the Elephant Swimming Pool at Lucky Beach, southwest Phuket.
However, more and more tourists are resenting elephant swimming spots, as one visitor from Hong Kong, China, put it:
"It's good if the elephants want to go swimming on their own and tourists go swimming with the elephants. But in fact, elephants don't like to swim with tourists, and in order to meet the needs of tourists, mahouts pull the elephants' ears with hooks and take them to the lake to swim with tourists, which I don't think is good at all. In a way, tourists are the real culprits in the abuse of elephants."
Thailand's elephants are predominantly Asian, and the Asian elephant living in Southeast Asia is listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. To protect elephants, elephant sanctuaries have sprung up.
International volunteers set up a Green Elephant Conservation Centre about 20 kilometers from Phuket Elephant Swimming Pool. The center works to save elephants from abuse and make interaction between elephants and visitors more relaxed. Elephant caretakers let visitors feed the elephants by hand, wipe mud on their backs, and wash the elephants with buckets and long brushes. The elephant sleeps just opposite the elephant caretaker's hut. An elephant in the sanctuary used to move timber in the logging industry, and a caretaker looks after her every day.
The center has also rescued hundreds of abused animals, including gibbons, tigers, cougars, otters, and a chimpanzee that has lived in a small cage in the school's yard for 30 years. Thirteen caretakers look after the elephants every day, allowing them to roam freely in a 55-acre enclosure. The reserve allows visitors to see elephants up close outside a high fence.
Elephants graze at animal protection centers
The Green Elephant Sanctuary guide said:
"We observe how the elephants feel and check their health every day. If the elephants are happy and normal, continue to let them interact with the tourists, and if they are sick, the veterinarian will take care of them in time. We don't force elephants to do things they don't want to do. ”
Although the Green Elephant Conservation Center can temporarily provide a better living environment for elephants, the elephants in the Conservation Center have never escaped the fate of performing for humans. The best way to treat elephants and other wildlife is not to put them in conservation centers, but to return them to nature, to their habitats, without disturbing them.
In protecting elephants and other wildlife, China's approach deserves the world's praise and reference.
In March 2020, 16 elephants from Xishuangbanna left their habitat and headed north. Along the way, elephants damaged facilities in many villages, destroying 842 acres of crops, and directly losing 8.5 million yuan.
Go north to elephants to destroy villages
In contrast to similar situations in other countries, elephants may be rounded up and hunted, but China immediately set up an elephant protection emergency team, tracked elephants with drones, urged people in villages along the route not to harm elephants, and coordinated with local governments to regularly feed elephants such as pineapples and gourds.
In August 2021, after more than a year of playing, 17 elephants (who gave birth to a baby elephant during the journey) finally returned to their original habitat safely.
Elephants resting north
Also developing countries in Asia, Thailand abuses animals and uses animal performances to make money, while China protects animals and provides a good natural habitat for animals. This comparison shows the level of spiritual civilization of the two countries.
Foreign netizens commented on the incident of Chinese elephants going north: "Elephants have been destroyed all the way but they are still treated with good food and drink, which shows that even elephants know that China is a good country."
In the final analysis, it is still Marx's remark that "economic construction determines the superstructure, and the basis of spiritual civilization is material civilization."
People first, life first, how fortunate to be born in the prosperous China