Assignment: COVID-19 and Thailand’s Elephants

In November 2021, We Animals Media contributor Adam Oswell spent several days in these communities documenting this story after winning Wildlife Photographer of the Year for his portrayal of a captive elephant.

As many mahouts struggled to maintain and feed their elephants, this enforced break from work provided a period of reflection as well as an opportunity to free themselves from their dependence on elephant camps. For the elephants, it meant respite from the abuse often endured when working in Thailand’s tourist trade.

Thailand is heavily dependent upon tourism, which made up over 20% of the country’s GDP in 2019. In addition to being an important part of Thailand’s cultural heritage, elephants have been a major tourist attraction for decades. This has had a profound effect on wild elephant populations throughout Asia.

The modern elephant tourism model introduced huge demand for both live elephants and elephant products and derivatives such as skin and ivory.

Traditionally, the most common method of sourcing live elephants to boost domestic populations in Thailand (and most of Asia) involves capturing young elephant calves from their wild herds. Mothers are often killed while trying to defend their young. The captured calves are trained using violent processes and are then laundered into domestic populations. Once working, their compliance is maintained by jabs and cuts to the head from a bull-hook, leaving scars and psychological damage for the rest of their lives.

One bright spot for elephants has emerged from the COVID crisis — A new model with an aim to promote peaceful human and elephant coexistence.

These visuals capture the work of the organizations and individuals providing long term care to the elephants impacted by Thailand’s tourism industry.

Thailand, 2021. Adam Oswell / We Animals Media

In recent years, international pressure to end elephant rides and animal cruelty in tourism has gained traction, but the onset of the pandemic has made this a sudden reality as thousands of elephants were forced back to their villages. The prolonged stays have led to a revival of close bonds and many keepers have sought ways to keep their elephants at home with their families. Many now feel reluctant to go back to the elephant camps once the ravages of the pandemic subside and mass tourism resumes.

But what would the future hold for these elephants without tourism? Once retired, will they go to sanctuaries where people might still pay for a ride or watch them perform? Can mahouts alone be expected to keep a hungry elephant fed and healthy for the rest of their life? Are we prepared for the consequences of removing wild animals from their environment for the sake of entertainment?

Asia’s remaining wild elephant population is barely 50,000 individuals and threatened by habitat destruction, poaching and expanding agriculture. The end of elephant tourism might save future populations from being taken from the wild, but a new cruelty-free relationship between human and elephant still lies in the hands of the mahouts, their families and the world’s tourists.