Cruelty debate over zoo exhibition highlights complexities of elephant tourism in Thailand

(CNN) — An Asian elephant struts into the pool and dips its head below the outside, the exercise of the tip of its trunk like a snorkel.

Standing on its hind legs because the water relieves the gravitational burden of its body, the animal wades between two men offering bananas at both discontinuance of the pool.

In a room down under, awestruck formative years observe thru wide glass residence windows.

About a of the of us that admire attended this elephant swimming exhibition at Khao Kheow Beginning Zoo southeast of Bangkok are taken aback that it has been criticized shall we utter of animal cruelty and exploitation.

But a most current controversy over an award-qualified portray of a swimming elephant at Khao Kheow illustrates the friction that exists between some animal rights activists and of us that put together, cherish and take advantage of the tourism roles that elephants occupy in Thailand.

The thorny debate touches on complications of animal welfare, media representation and what some watch as cultural bias.

‘Elephant in the room’

Basically the most favorite outcry started in October 2021 after a portray by Australian photojournalist Adam Oswell won the Plant life and fauna Photographer of the Year (WPY) award for Photojournalism. Jog by the Natural Historical past Museum (NHM) of London since 1964, the annual WPY is a prestigious contest.

Taken at Khao Kheow and titled “Elephant in the Room,” Oswell’s portray shows an elephant with its head and body submerged whereas a trainer, or mahout, swims above in what appears to be like to be a reasonably dinky tank. Folks of assorted ages, all with Asian facets, are pictured watching the elephant.

WPY host Chris Packham known as the scene “wholly unacceptable.” In acceptance comments, Oswell acknowledged he thinks the image “shows a disconnection with nature (and) how we abolish nature.”

Some reactions to the portray on social media had been harsher, in general deploying adjectives like “sickening,” “vile” and “barbaric.”

Many Thai of us countered that NHM’s presentation of the portray was misleading or lacking ample context. One Thai-language tweet that defended Khao Kheow was retweeted almost 40,000 cases.

“Care was taken in the drafting of the captions no longer to single out this particular appeal nor the contributors watching nonetheless to blueprint wider context to this substitute from the affect of the Covid-19 pandemic on vacationer enterprises to the worldwide assign a matter to for animal tourism from global tourists,” an NHM spokesperson instructed CNN Sprint.

“For instance,” they persevered, “in the net caption Receive Staffan Widstrand says, ‘It may well had been any with out a doubt one of us there in the target audience, from anywhere on this planet, at beautiful necessary any zoo.'”

But Khao Kheow is the honorable zoo in Thailand, and with out a doubt one of finest four on this planet, according to Khao Kheow’s net net page, the assign elephants is also viewed thru underwater residence windows. It’s the honorable of seven zoos operated by the govt.-speed Zoological Park Organization of Thailand (ZPO).

Khao Kheow has been licensed by the South East Asian Zoos Association (SEAZA), which is a member of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA). The ZPO maintains that every of its zoos are guided by the principles of conservation, review, education and game.

Plunging into controversy

Oswell’s portray was no longer the major case of media documentation sparking outrage over Khao Kheow’s elephant swimming exhibition.

In 2018, a net-based petition worrying that “officers shut down this zoo and hand over their elephants to a sanctuary” still over 130,000 signatures.

“Exhausted elephants are being compelled to abolish underwater programs for tourists in Thailand,” wrote British data outlet The Solar at the time.

Elephants are pure-born swimmers, nonetheless critics come upon Khao Kheow’s swimming exhibition as a compelled performance. More broadly, they watch it shall we utter of how animals are exploited for the amusement of humans.

“The coaching for this form of notify in general starts with the removal of a calf from its mother and uses anguish and anxiousness-based mostly mostly punishment,” says with out a doubt one of the principal captions accompanying Oswell’s portray on the NHM net net page.

“We construct no longer exercise any hooks or any form of force to salvage the elephants to enter the pool,” Dr. Inch to Arsaithamkul, a veterinarian who works at Khao Kheow as an assistant director under the ZPO, instructed CNN Sprint. “We are asserting, ‘or no longer it is feeding time, you salvage a bucket of bananas,’ and they voluntarily salvage into the pool.”

Inch to acknowledged the elephants are professional thru reward-based mostly mostly certain reinforcement, no longer anguish and anxiousness. Not like at hundreds of Thailand’s elephant facilities, tourists can not plod or swim with elephants at Khao Kheow.

The zoo’s lab analyzes elephant feces for cortisol ranges, doubtlessly alerting workers to mental stress that the elephants would be experiencing. Inch to acknowledged he can gauge how the elephants are feeling as they swim thru observation by myself.

“They construct no longer notify any stress,” he acknowledged. “They observe cheerful.”

Inch to denied that elephants abolish programs at Khao Kheow. On the opposite hand, past photographs appears to be like to notify a mahout scary a swimming elephant to time and all once more dive and surface to entertain the target audience.

When CNN Sprint anonymously seen the exhibition from above and under the water in November 2021, the elephant entered the pool by myself after a word from a mahout. As soon as in the water, it ate many bananas. No programs had been performed, and no humans went in the pool.

One of Khao Kheow’s eight elephants enters the pool for 30 minutes at position cases twice per day. At other cases, the total elephants dwell in an eight-acre enclosure with a pond and a hillside dotted with trees.

The elephants are finest chained, acknowledged Inch to, when males was aggressive due to the a upward thrust in reproductive hormones, a pure bellow identified as musth.

Because the director of Wild Welfare, a UK-registered charity that works to enhance the welfare of captive animals worldwide, Simon Marsh frolicked at Khao Kheow in 2019 and instructed it, in his words, “on many animal welfare practices including the administration of their elephants.”

“Wild Welfare believes that Khao Kheow Beginning Zoo is committed to allowing the animals in their care the opportunity to live a chubby and worrying lifestyles in captivity by providing upright animal welfare,” Marsh instructed CNN Sprint. The charity deems “animal demonstrations which may well per chance be detrimental to the bodily or psychological well-being of the animals” unacceptable, he added.

‘Always a detrimental thing’

Some of the a huge option of of us that thinks the elephant swimming exhibition is no longer any longer in the honorable pursuits of the animals is Edwin Wiek, founder and director of Plant life and fauna Chums Foundation Thailand (WFFT). Amongst the 850 rescued animals under WFFT’s care are 26 elephants that freely race the roughly 95-acre Elephant Refuge stop to the shoreline town of Cha-am.

“Forcing an animal to enact an act, irrespective of act that will doubtless be, is repeatedly a detrimental thing,” he instructed CNN Sprint. “To utter that the animal does it out of free option is in point of truth no longer upright.”

But Wiek’s two a long time of abilities in wildlife rescue admire given him a gigantic point of view on Thailand’s captive elephant effort.

“I’m no longer asserting (the elephant swimming notify) is okay. But if I measure the damage performed on the elephants, whereas you observe at it from an animal welfare point of view, I suspect these elephants doubtlessly admire better care and are under better residing prerequisites than hundreds of the elephants at the camps across the nation.”

A more pressing effort, according to Wiek, is how a extended downturn in tourism due to the the Covid-19 pandemic has inflicted severe struggling on some captive elephants. About a of the elephants that WFFT has rescued all the map thru the pandemic “had been fundamentally starving,” he acknowledged.

Citing a gorilla that has been held in a dinky enclosure above a Bangkok having a behold mall for 3 a long time shall we utter, Wiek added that he desires the most flagrant examples of animal cruelty to salvage the most consideration.

‘We also can discontinuance up losing our Thai-ness’

Some Thai of us watch a double standard in how Khao Kheow, and Thailand in standard, changed into lightning rods for animal-connected criticism from the West. They shock why, shall we utter, the elephant swimming exhibitions held at zoos in Germany and Switzerland admire drawn minimal criticism irrespective of acting to fragment similarities with the one at Khao Kheow.

“White point of view” and “whitesplaining” are two of the ways that Twitter users described NHM’s presentation of Oswell’s portray. Others accused the WPY awards of a Western-centric bias.

“Whereas the (WPY) competition obtained entries from 95 countries, there may be more work to enact in encouraging more entries from photographers in the Global South,” defined the NHM spokesperson. “As a step to extra support entries from across the enviornment, entry costs for the 58th competition will doubtless be waived for photographers who live in 50 selected countries.”

Some Thailand-based mostly mostly animal rights activists think that Western criticism of the therapy of captive elephants in Thailand, whereas in general warranted and in general rooted in compassionate intentions, can come upon as smug, rigid and lacking a contextual working out of the nation.

For instance, some Westerners boom that every of Thailand’s roughly 3,800 captive elephants should always be moved to sanctuaries the assign interaction with humans is proscribed to veterinary care and observation from a distance. Enacting a shift of this stature would doubtless require changes to just a few Thai rules and big portions of funding, making it unrealistic in the foreseeable future.

In a nation the assign of us had been residing with elephants for diverse centuries, some Thais elaborate requires classic changes to captive elephant coaching and administration as threats to Thai traditions and sensitive notions of cultural identification.

“If we hear to Westerners too necessary, we also can discontinuance up losing our Thai-ness,” wrote Chatchote Thitaram of Chiang Mai College’s Center for Elephant and Plant life and fauna Health in an realizing piece that explains doubtless the most steps Thailand has taken to enhance the trouble for captive elephants.

But some Thais accept as true with the Westerners who wish to observe more classic shifts in captive elephant welfare. As they watch it, Thai nationalistic views are being frail to interpret and perpetuate cruelty in opposition to elephants.

‘Where enact you plot the line?’

Historically, Westerners admire played pivotal, if indirect, roles in expanding Thailand’s captive elephant market.

Within the slack 19th and early 20th centuries, Colonial entities just like the British Bombay Burmah Buying and selling Co. fueled a logging growth that compelled many elephants into no longer easy labor.

Later in the 20th century, assign a matter to amongst Western tourists for elephant utilizing supplied a brand fresh financial incentive for wild elephant poaching.

As consciousness of cruelty in opposition to captive elephants has spread amongst Westerners more lately, many Thai elephant camps shifted to focusing on tourists from emerging markets, a lot like China and India.

Meanwhile, Western shuttle companies and animal welfare organizations are imposing their possess strict pointers on Thai elephant facilities, guidance tourists a long way from of us who construct no longer fully comply.

In response to Wiek, these requirements are “formula too excessive” for diverse of Thailand’s captive elephant facilities to satisfy. Even supposing he supports lengthy-term shifts favoring the sanctuary model, he worries that with out a “step-by-step” come, upright intentions can inadvertently position off more struggling.

“Some camps stopped utilizing elephants, nonetheless they had been soundless (letting tourists) feed and bathe them, and at once these animal organizations acknowledged, ‘It’s likely you’ll per chance no longer enact that both!’ We didn’t abolish an different and the elephants in the camps are worse off now than they had been sooner than. Where enact you plot the line?”

Top image: Elephants stand on a hillside stop to the Mae Sapok Village on July 21, 2020 in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Credit: Lauren DeCicca/Getty Photos