June 27, 1997
Logging Ban Creates Unemployment for Elephants
It Isn't Easy Being Big
Forget the dilemma of endangered spotted owls of the Pacific Northwest or the dilemma of the secretive marbled murelet (a sea bird) in California, which threatens the livelihood of American loggers. What about the poor elephants of Thailand? Now here's a true environmental dilemma — a case of environmental protection threatening elephants.
Elephants, once the symbol of the emperor, have always been popular in Thailand. Tourists can buy carved wooden elephants varying in size from palm-sized to something the size of a Volkswagon beetle automobile. Elephant figures also are found made of brass and cloth, and as jade pendants, pins and earrings. You can buy silk and cotton pillow covers with elephant motifs, sequined elephant wall hangings (made in Burma), elephant T-shirts, elephant ash trays and you name it.
Real elephants (you can easily tell the difference) used to work in Thailand's logging industry, but no longer. Anti-logging laws passed in 1988-89 and the downsizing of timber operations as a result of deforestation have helped cause elephant unemployment. They have also lost their jobs to mechanization — trucks that can move the logs once handled by elephants.
Besides losing their jobs, Thailand's estimated 3,000 to 4,000 domestic and fewer than 2,000 wild elephants also face a general food shortage. Thailand had about 11,000 domestic elephants in the mid 1960s and about 30,000 wild elephants. There isn't enough grass or fruit for them to eat in the many poor villages. Elsewhere, food is made scarce where reforestation projects plant exotic nonfood trees, such as eucalyptus for the pulp and paper industry, or where natural wetlands are converted to other uses such as farming. The result is hungry elephants that compete with poor villagers for food, sometimes bellying up to the village garbage dump. When hunger makes elephants behave wildly and they threaten villagers, some villagers retaliate by killing them.
So what's a poor, unemployed domesticated elephant to do? Just what many unemployed people do — head for the big city, in this case Bangkok, Thailand's capital. Elephant trainers from northern Thailand bring their elephants to Bangkok several times a year — a trip of several hundred miles. Other elephants come to town as semipermanent residents. Some put on street-corner performances for residents and tourists. Many help their mahouts (trainers) sell fruit, which earns about $20 (US) a day. One benefit from selling fruit is that city dwellers often feed some to the elephant, which can eat from 650 to 800 pounds a day. This is called selling your fruit and eating it too.
Feeding an elephant can be an experience in itself. Elephants drool a lot when they eat so when they reach out with their trunks to take fruit from your hand, they slobber on you. Gobs of slobber. Bring a hand towel when you feed elephants. Something else you can do with an elephant is to walk under it. Some people think this is an antidote for bad luck. As long as the elephant doesn't decide to sit down, you've had good luck.
Confronted by a growing number of elephants, some middle class Thais who belong to animal rights groups feel that the urban heat, pollution and noise isn't good for the elephants. (Some traffic police, parking attendants and bus drivers wear protective masks over their mouths and noses because of the extremely bad air pollution.) These elephant-loving Thais pressured officials until a law was passed in 1995 to kick elephants out of the city. This is easier said than done. [So now it's not okay for poor mahouts to bring their hungry elephants to town to look for work or to beg for food, but it is okay for poor villagers to come by themselves to look for work and beg for food. Not many people are concerned about the poor people.]
Once the law passed, police who saw an elephant, which isn't difficult, were supposed to fine it 500 baht ($25 US) and ask it to leave town. Since the police aren't prepared to put an elephant in jail (it won't fit in a squad car), let alone feed it 700 pounds of fruit a day, the police pretty much look the other way and say "Mai pen rai," which very loosely translated means "No big deal." Thais are among the most tolerant of people anyway.
So now some elephants spend their days in the city moving from place to place to perform, slobbering on a few people who buy fruit during intermissions, stopping for water at gas stations, construction sites and anyplace else they can find a water hose, and resting in the shade of highway and railroad overpasses.
But the environmental dilemma remains. Deforestation threatens the environment and population growth alters natural habitat that supplies food for wildlife, including elephants. So now there is nothing for wild elephants to eat and no way for domestic elephants to earn a living. And you thought you had problems.
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