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MANY people have a romanticized image of riding an elephant on their travels around Southeast Asia, getting that iconic Instagram shot, and ticking it off their bucket list.
What is a mahout?
Mahout is the name of a professional elephant rider and trainer. Traditionally, mahouts are assigned to an elephant at a young age and taught how to train it for farm work and other domestic chores.
However, the definition of a mahout couldn’t be more different today.
Mahouts no longer “bond” with their elephants from an early age and grow up with them. Instead, most riders and trainers perceived as mahouts are in fact, lowly-paid migrant laborers, often from Myanmar.
How has this happened?
The transition from professionals to amateur mahouts began when the Thai government banned the private logging trade in 1999 in response to flash floods caused by unregulated deforestation.
Mahout families were left with a huge animal to feed and no salary.
This desperate situation led to many mahouts crossing the border into Myanmar where logging was still legal, while others begged on the streets of Thailand, with their elephant in tow.
When Thailand began emerging as a tourist hotspot, elephants and mahouts found a new trade – entertainment. But without industry regulators enforcing proper working conditions for the riders and suitable living conditions for the elephants, the trade was quickly exploited.
How are inexperienced mahouts suffering today?
“Mahouts are perhaps the most misunderstood and overlooked part of the complex picture of Asian elephants in tourism,” Horizon Guides co-founder and editor Cynthia Ord wrote in Elephants in Asia, Ethically.
And a complex picture it is.
While WAP’s biggest concern remains the suffering of animals, it also recognizes that traditional mahouts play a major part in the welfare of captive elephants.
However, their role is “unclear” and “outdated,” WAP senior campaigns manager Ben Pearson, explained in an article.
“While elephants suffer in poor living conditions, being forced to carry people on their backs, mahouts are experiencing low pay for a high-risk job, with many suffering injuries and having little financial security,” Pearson added.
The mahout’s lack of experience and inadequate training puts everyone’s life in danger, including the blissfully unaware tourist’s.
Recently, a 10-year-old temple elephant trampled her handler to death in India. Last December, a Chinese tour guide in Thailand was killed by an elephant as he tried to save his group from the mammal’s rampage.
By nature, elephants aren’t aggressive, but when pushed to the point of insanity because of frequent physical punishment and a grueling work regime, they can snap.
When WAP spoke to 200 mahouts across 8o camps in Thailand, they found 65 percent of mahouts admitting to using a bullhook or a sharp stick very frequently to control their elephant.
Mahouts Elephant Foundation co-founder Sarah Blaine explained in Elephants in Asia, Ethically that this force is used because mahouts are “frightened of the animals in their care, which easily leads to abuse and accidents”.
What’s the future for Thailand’s mahouts?
In venues which keep elephants in diabolical conditions, chained to the floor with no social interaction and an inadequate, unvaried diet, mahouts are also found suffering.
Often, they are forced to live in squalor, work long hours with no training or safety regulations, and survive only on tips as many venues do not offer a basic salary.
But WAP’s report, which is the first comprehensive research on the socioeconomic situation of mahouts across Thailand, along with other studies conducted by WAP, aims to help transition elephant entertainment camps into elephant-friendly venues and expose the harsh treatment of elephants and mahouts.
WAP points out that there are venues which treat both elephants and mahouts with respect, such as Elephant Valley Thailand, Mahouts Elephant Foundation (MEF), and Boon Lott’s Elephant Sanctuary (BLES).
In these sanctuaries, they don’t use brute force to control elephants because the elephants don’t need controlling. They’re free to roam forests and bathe in lakes, as visitors watch from afar, ensuring everyone’s safety.
“At elephant-friendly venues, visitors can quietly walk behind elephants from a safe distance and watch them do their own thing under the watchful eye of mahouts,” Pearson said.
These are the venues you should give your money to, to avoid the prolonged suffering of mahouts and the pain they inflict on elephants.
Visiting elephant venues in any Southeast Asian country is fine, as long as you do thorough research beforehand and avoid venues which offer anything more than watching elephants from a distance.
Although you won’t be guaranteed a sighting, you can travel happily in the knowledge that animals and humans aren’t suffering for the purpose of entertainment.
The post Are Thailand’s mahouts suffering as much as the elephants they train? appeared first on Travel Wire Asia.
Source: travelwireasia.com