Volunteering at the Elephant Nature Park | Chiang Mai, Thailand
When I moved to Hong Kong just over a year ago, high on my priority travel list was to ride an elephant through the jungles of Thailand. Please don’t stop reading. You see, like many ill-informed tourists, I too thought about how incredible it would be to sit atop these giant creatures while taking in some of the most beautiful scenery Asia has to offer. Once I started looking in to it, however, I shamefully realized how misguided my “fun” intentions were.
According to the World Wildlife Fund, more than 100,000 Asian elephants may have existed at the start of the 20th century, but numbers have fallen by at least 50 percent over the last three generations, making them an official endangered species. The decline of elephants is due to a number of reasons including, habitat loss, poaching and capture. In Asia specifically, many elephants are taken from the wild and sold in to the tourism industry, which is unfortunately booming in Thailand – and yes, that includes elephant riding as well as the circus.
But I don’t want this post to focus on the cruel abuse that these animals suffer, instead, I want to focus on what’s being done to help them thrive. This is how I discovered the Elephant Nature Park (ENP).
When a friend of mine asked if I wanted to join her on a backpacking excursion through Thailand, I leapt at the opportunity. For my portion of the trek, I joined her for a week in Chiang Mai (you can read about that here), eager at the chance to see these beautiful animals up close and personal. Armed with my facts and research (I became the worlds biggest elephant advocate overnight) I was ready to see what was happening at ENP, and what I could do to help in some way.
Upon arriving at the park, I was amazed at how “wild” it truly felt. It became increasingly normal to walk around (always with our guide, of course) and see elephants roaming freely, bathing in the river, or eating with their herd. Once I got over the shock of holy-crap-these-animals-are-ginormous, we were able to jump right in. We fed them, bathed them and even spent some time in the kitchen making their meals. As you might have guessed, elephants eat a lot of food, averaging about 200-600 pounds per day.
Now you might be thinking, are they truly free? I wondered this myself. But then I discovered most of the elephants at ENP are injured in some way. Blind from slingshots or the bright lights of the circus, infections caused by abuse wounds, broken legs or ankles from the logging industry or landmines, as well as other horrendous wrongs suffered in their former lives. Injuries that would kill them if left in the wild.
Being rescued and rehabilitated at ENP means 24-hour, onsite, veterinary care, food, water and the ability for these animals to self-select a herd for social and emotional well-being, as well as starting a family. Free from persecution and danger for the rest of their lives. Free to heal and begin a new life.
My two days at ENP gifted me an experience I will never forget. On the last day, our volunteer team sat around after lunch discussing the worldy current state of affairs. The Las Vegas shooting had just happened, and we were talking about how scary things are right now. How it seems every time you turn around something awful is happening to good people and unifying ourselves, while accepting each other and our differences seems sometimes a distant hope. While looking around at where we were presently, and seeing volunteers come together from around the world to do honest – good work – we settled our conversation on the fact that good will always win, and that’s what’s happening at the Elephant Nature Park.
Volunteering at ENP comes in various capacities, from one day to several weeks at a time. In addition to being an elephant sanctuary, ENP is also home to more than 400 rescued wild dogs and water buffalo, each with their own volunteer care team. There are a plethora of ways you can help make a difference. As a registered Thai nonprofit foundation, all proceeds collected go towards the feeding and caring for these animals, and increasing the size of the sanctuary.
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