Go see the elephant in the wild

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As a favorite destination in Asia for Chinese tourists, Thailand received more than 10.5 million Chinese travelers in 2018, with experts saying the number last year could only have been higher.

However, a study shows that poor elephant welfare in the tourist industry is a big problem in Asian countries such as India, Laos, Cambodia, and especially in Thailand. Between 2014 and 2016, the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit of Oxford University's Department of Zoology conducted surveys on the living conditions of nearly 3,000 elephants used for tours and other tourist services, which showed that three in every four elephants were not taken proper care of－not given enough food, denied social contacts with other elephants and/or forced to live a small area.

In Thailand alone, more than 2,000 elephants are employed in the tourism industry, accounting for nearly 70 percent of all the elephants used in the tourism industry across the world. For thousands of years, Asian elephants have been used to clear forests, ferry logs and other activities, but only in the past few decades have people started to use them in the tourism industry, according to Jan Schmidt-Burbach, head of Wildlife and Animal Welfare research at WAP.

"This goes against the natural instincts and will ultimately impact their welfare, sometimes to the extreme," Schmidt-Burbach said."Because of the cruel training process and severely inadequate living conditions, those elephants have poor diets and they're usually chained when they're not performing, denying them any opportunity to socialize naturally with other elephants, which is a key part of their life in the wild."

A research conducted by WAP in 2018 shows that elephants suffer the most by being forced to live in poor conditions, and about 65 percent of the mahouts often or very often use a bull-hook or a sharp nail attached to a stick to control the elephants.

"Hundreds of thousands of wild animals across the world are taken away from their natural habitats, forced into captivity and subjected to abuse, both mentally and physically, to provide entertainment for tourists and earn profits for the owners," said Zhao Zhonghua, country director of World Animal Protection China. He also warned that animal entertainment poses a threat to both the animals and tourists. For example, humans run the risk of contacting zoonotic diseases from infected animals.