{"id":128451,"date":"2025-08-08T07:16:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T07:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/128451\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T07:16:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T07:16:08","slug":"the-elephant-whisperer-one-thai-womans-lifelong-quest-to-protect-a-rescued-herd-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/128451\/","title":{"rendered":"The elephant whisperer: one Thai woman\u2019s lifelong quest to protect a rescued herd | Environment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saengduean Lek Chailert was five years old when she saw an elephant for the first time. It was in chains, lumbering past her home in rural Thailand<\/a> on its way to help loggers pull trees from the forest. Back then, she saw the giant mammals like everyone else \u2013 as animals that served humans. But that changed the day she heard a scream from the forest.<\/p>\n

Chailert was 16 when she heard the terrible noise. She scrambled through the trees until she found the source: a bull elephant scrabbling in the mud as it tried and failed to drag a log out of a ditch. Every failed attempt was met with punishment from the loggers and mahout, the elephant keeper.<\/p>\n

One would fire a sling shot at the animal, another stabbed it with a knife and a third jabbed a spike into the elephant\u2019s leg. With each jab, the animal would let out a scream of pain.<\/p>\n

An older resident of the refuge. Since the logging ban, most working elephants are in the tourist industry, trained under the cruel phajaan system, which involves restraint and physical coercion<\/p>\n

\u201cThe elephant looked at me and I felt the fear and anger. I felt helpless and confused. My heart hurt a lot,\u201d says Chailert. \u201cI tried everything to get the screaming to stop but I was disturbing their work, so I had to go. I kept asking \u2018why, why, why?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I went back to my village, I could still hear the elephant when we were having dinner that night,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The incident changed the direction of Chailert\u2019s life for ever. She was from a poor family \u2013 there was no electricity or school in her village \u2013 but she vowed to do something for the animals she loved.<\/p>\n

Before a ban on logging in natural forests<\/a> in Thailand in 1989, elephants were a key part of the industry. In the early 20th century, there were an estimated 100,000 elephants in Thailand. Thousands were worked to death or left with severe injuries from dragging enormous trees from the rainforest to roads, where they would be transported for lumber.<\/p>\n

Chailert\u2019s efforts have influenced the way Thai tourism views elephants and conservation<\/p>\n

After the ban, many elephants were used by the country\u2019s rapidly growing tourism industry to give performances and rides.<\/p>\n

Working in a tourism agency in her early 20s, Chailert watched the change happen with horror. \u201cThere were many backpackers at that time. Camp owners were competing with each other for tourists,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey would train their elephants to dance, ride a motorbike, play darts or hula hoop, walk on a rope or play a harmonica. This brought more suffering to elephants.\u201d<\/p>\n

It took Chailert a few attempts to fulfil her dream of finding a way to care for Thailand\u2019s elephants. In 1996, she sold everything she had and borrowed money to set up an elephant sanctuary. She paid $30,000 for four hectares (10 acres) of land to provide a home to nine elephants.<\/p>\n

\u2018Some arrive with huge mental issues,\u2019 Chailert says. \u2018Some stand like a zombie\u2019<\/p>\n

She insisted that there would be no elephant rides or performances. Her family invested money to help but after disagreements over how to run the park, she left the project, taking the elephants with her.<\/p>\n

Then, Chailert got lucky. National Geographic was filming a
documentary with the Hollywood star Meg Ryan about Thailand\u2019s wild elephants, which were estimated to number 4,000 to 4,400 by 2023; Chailert and her newly released elephants featured in it.<\/p>\n

In the US, a Texas couple Bert and Christine Von Roemer saw the TV programme <\/strong>and contacted Chailert, donating enough money to buy a 20-hectare parcel of land in the Mae Taeng district of northern Thailand, near Chiang Mai. In 2003, Elephant Nature Park<\/a> was born.<\/p>\n

Successive individual rescue cases reinforced Chailert\u2019s decision to dedicate her life to elephant welfare, despite the financial hurdles of establishing a new model for elephant care<\/p>\n

Today, about 120 rescue elephants are at the park, which has grown to more than 1,000 hectares, home to a small fraction of the 3,900 or so domesticated elephants in the country. The sanctuary\u2019s work has an enormous social media following on Instagram and Facebook.<\/p>\n

Elephants arrive from all over Thailand. Chailert, now 64, sometimes travels for more than 50 hours with the animals after they are rescued.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome arrive with huge mental issues. Some stand like a zombie; some are aggressive, they swing their head back and forth. When they arrive, we do not allow our staff to use any tools or do anything that might make them feel threatened.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are gentle. We have to give them our love to make them trust us. We have to be patient,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u2018The priority is that every elephant has a family,\u2019 says Chailert<\/p>\n

New arrivals are almost always put into quarantine and slowly introduced to the herd. Over time, they are accepted. When their ears start to flap and their tails start to whirl, the elephants are happy, says Chailert.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe priority is that every elephant has a family,\u201d she says, showing the herd feeding in the forest on a screen.<\/p>\n

Today, the conservation scheme is funded by visitors and volunteers who pay to work on the project. But despite the success of the sanctuary, Chailert fears for the future of Asian elephants, which she believes are decreasing in Thailand, despite official figures showing a steady increase in the population<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A mahout feeds an elephant. Asian elephants can eat up to 150kg (330lb) of food a day<\/p>\n

\u201cThroughout Asia, many people are starting to hate elephants. Human-wildlife conflict<\/a> is a big problem. Many died from being shot and poisoned\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany have lost their habitat and water sources so they have to go to golf clubs and rice fields \u2013 places that don\u2019t belong to them. So, people get angry and make the elephant into a monster. The future will depend on the government policy to resolve this,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

A playful elephant. When their ears start to flap and their tails whirl, they are happy, says Chailert<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saengduean Lek Chailert was five years old when she saw an elephant for the first time. It was…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":128452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[159,67,132,68,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-128451","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us","12":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114991922240596463","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}