Re: Asian Elephant Conservation—Too Elephantocentric? Towards a Biocultural Approach of Conservation

Although Lainé (2018), in his article in the December 2018 issue of ABR, provides a good perspective on Laos village life and the role of elephants in the not-too-distant past, we find it unfortunate that he chose the Elephant Conservation Centre (ECC) at Sayaboury as a negative example of modern “elephantocentric” practice. The ECC stands out in that it experiments with re-herding while still explicitly not demonizing mahout behavior.

Current Elephant Conservation Project in Laos: Discourses and Practices

Elephant Rescues

The ECC’s goal is not to remove elephants from the villages where they live. Elephants are being sold by their owners who can no longer care for them, or simply decide to sell them because they can no longer generate an income with them, due to a lack of opportunities in the logging and/or tourism industries. In some extreme cases, male elephants made redundant in the logging industry, and considered too dangerous for the tourism industry, are neglected and simply left to die, as I observed 2 months ago in Sayaboury district. Here at the ECC, we take care of nine male elephants and we are possibly the only place where captive male elephants are cared for, thus fighting against their declining population.

Hongsa, which was once the cradle of Lao elephant culture, has seen the installation of the Hongsa Power Plant, one of Laos’ largest industrial projects. When the mine started operations in Hongsa, a huge land grab pushed elephants outside of the district. About 80% of village elephant pastures were destroyed (AsiaNews 2009; Land Information Working Group (LIWG) 2010; Deboonme 2012; Blake 2016). From about 54 elephants living in the district back in 1999, only a dozen remained in 2015. Today, this number has dropped to eight. ElefantAsia, the NGO I co-founded in 2001, and a precursor to ECC, helped create the first Mahout Association in Hongsa to support local mahouts’ transition from the logging industry to ecotourism by creating elephant activities they could manage within the community, controlling the product (2-day elephant forest treks) and ensuring fair compensation for everyone involved. Later, when the Elephant Conservation Center (ECC) was created, the elephants were purchased from owners whose decision to sell was driven by poverty and their inability to look after the elephants in the traditional fashion.

In short, the owners approached the ECC and requested to sell their elephants. The ECC’s agreement was in full knowledge of the work Elefantasia had already done to keep the traditional “village elephant” way of life alive, even though it is now considered untenable by the communities themselves.

Village Elephants, Logging and Traditional Mahout Knowledge

Mahouts at the ECC have the final say when it comes to handling the elephants under their care. They keep the khor and khorbeit (traditional mahout tools) in a bag and are asked to use them only in case of absolute necessity. In most cases, such tools become necessary only when an elephant becomes a danger to people or property. Promoting their use as a primary means of control is contradictory to the safe handling of an elephant that can be trained and managed using a mix of kindness and determination from a mahout with whom the elephant develops a relationship of trust. It is now broadly accepted that softer approaches to animal training and handling are more efficient and safer for both humans and animals and the ECC’s introduction of instructional methods such as Target Training aim to scientifically enhance mahouts’ use of their skills and tools, not replace them.

Elephants were once used at village level to assist local communities with daily village work, such as transporting harvest, firewood and—sometimes—pulling a few logs a day to be used for housing construction. This village life, however, is no longer the reality for Laos’ mahouts who now face the economic choice of finding work in an intensified illegal logging industry where they and their elephants are severely overworked, as reflected in the many injuries that Elefantasia’s mobile clinics have attended to, or moving to tourist centres outside the village.

The loss of this socio-economic-environmental harmony, consisting of mahout communities, elephants, the forest and traditional Animist-Buddhist Lao culture, is perhaps tragic, but it is a reality. When we discuss the situation with local mahouts (29 of whom are employed at the ECC), no one is naïve enough to believe that we can go back in time. Nor are these mahouts wishing the life of hardship they have suffered in logging camps for their children. While a minority of mahouts might have managed to sustain a simple village life and keep the work of their elephants to a minimal level, the majority of mahouts have not been able to do so. The majority found themselves employed in logging camps and have been living a life of poverty, and overworking their elephants in order to meet their employers’ objectives. A state logging ban has not helped these mahouts who see a return to the “old” village life as unattractive and, with an elephant to keep, financially untenable. The direct effect on their elephants is obvious: they will have no choice but to sell them. If work is not found in tourist centres, elephants will most likely end up working illegally in the logging industry or being sold to foreign countries. There is, for example, strong evidence to suggest that about 80 to 100 elephants have been sold illegally to tourist camps and circuses in the Xishuangbanna area in southern Yunnan, China, over the past 2 years (Cruise 2017).

The ECC presents mahouts with an opportunity to continue their vocation and to take care of their elephants in a rural, forested setting. The work undertaken in our facility gives the utmost importance to the traditional knowledge of mahouts and all programmes are discussed and approved upon with our mahouts. Our Mahout Academy project shows the importance we give to traditional Mahout knowledge and its transfer to the younger generation.

Elephant Riding

The ECC was initially created as an elephant nursery and care facility. While the mission has evolved to include potential re-wilding and scientific knowledge gathering, tourism remains the primary source of funds. At the outset, guest riding of elephants was featured as this was considered an imperative for a tourist activity. As the ECC’s programmes evolved, our place in the tourism market became more defined and we found our guests no longer considered riding to be an imperative. The ECC management also decided that their mission was to provide elephants with the best natural setting available and limit interaction with visitors to a minimum, so that they can be elephants, not tourist attractions.

It is important to note that the ECC recognizes that tourists riding elephants will play an important role in ensuring the survival of these elephants and of the traditional mahout knowledge. What must be encouraged is best practice in riding so that elephants do not suffer undue stress or work-related injuries, as they did in the logging industry. This development, along with setting parameters and guidelines to this effect, is what the Asian Captive Elephant Working Group (ACEWG)1 intends to provide (Gillbanks 2019). The ACEWG does not prioritize one management or activity regimen over another, but aims to scientifically determine the parameters of an activity that is most beneficial to the elephants.

Vetcare, Diet and Medication

The ECC and the French Research Institution IRD (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement) have formally entered into a research agreement to work on elephants’ self-medication (personal communication with IRD). The research is currently undertaken both at the ECC (where our elephants access a 530 ha area of land to feed on natural foods and self-medicate) and in the National Protected Area of Nam Pouy, Sayaboury province. Priority within this research is given to mahouts’ traditional knowledge about traditional medicine and elephants’ diet during all phases of their life cycle. The conclusions of this research will be published. Stating that the ECC gives priority to modern veterinary care is therefore incorrect. We actually use plants and argil for routine treatments of simple wounds. When it comes to larger and more acute wounds and pathologies, we do resort to using modern drugs, as mahouts themselves would by calling on their local district livestock veterinarian.

Trouble Between Animal/Environmental Ethics and Ecological Bias

Individual Conservation vs Species Conservation

Uniquely, the ECC is currently herding elephants in order to create socially compatible groups for future release into the wild, with a first “soft release” currently underway. A variety of approaches such as this are considered essential if we are to conserve elephants as a species.

Re-wilding

The re-wilding project was developed in recognition that the ECC is in a unique position, globally, to attempt to re-wild those elephants under our control that show the ability to form social groups and to thrive in the wild whilst documenting the process for potential replication elsewhere. The goal is to benefit those elephants that will thrive in the wild and, as mega-gardeners, those forests in which they are introduced.

Recognizing that the “traditional” village life is only available to very few elephants, the ECC seeks to provide the benefits of that life to elephants (low work load, conspecific social interaction, varied natural and provisioned diet, dedicated human care) and mahouts (low work load, lifestyle of choice, financial stability) with the additional benefit of scientific and veterinary knowledge.

Laos is developing rapidly and as the rural population becomes aware of the benefits of development and seeks those benefits, we must consult them in order to help them develop on their own terms. Some may wish for a return to a “simpler time” and we should certainly help them preserve those aspects of their lives that they cherish but in a developing society, almost inevitably, they find themselves in a minority position. For elephant-owning families, the ECC has an almost unique role in seeking to provide a platform to allow mahouts and elephants to manage that transition on their own terms.

Local Knowledge

Laotian mahouts at the ECC have a daily morning meeting with members of the biology, vet care and management teams. We take their advice extremely seriously and build our programmes (including re-wilding) on their experience. They are given the opportunity to share this knowledge with the management and are part of the implementation team, both on site at the ECC and in the National Protected Area. Nothing is undertaken without their consent. Today, they also handle the positive reinforcement training and basic treatment for elephants under their care.

It is only for complex medical treatment and oestrus checks that we resort to international vets, because Laos does not have specialized elephant vets. Local knowledge is at the core of our programmes. A Mahout Academy is currently being established at the ECC for its mahouts in order for knowledge to be shared with younger mahouts employed in tourist camps throughout the country. We hope to bridge the generation gap that originated with the end of the logging industry and the reluctance of younger generations to become mahouts. The mahouts at the ECC have a unique input into their own daily routine.

Elephant’s Life at the Village: an Ethnography of Mahout–Elephant Relationships

Village Life

The Tai Lue strongholds of Hongsa and Thongmixay, and to a lesser extent, Paklay and Phiang districts, no longer offer the conditions for the activities described by Lainé (2018). Most of the elephants have been sold or translocated to tourist places or to China, Korea, or Japan (Suter 2012; Kyodo 2015; Richardson 2016). Remaining elephants—mostly males as they are not always suitable for tourist camps—are jobless and risk being sold abroad or simply killed or let to die, as already observed. Elephants of breeding age still exist in Thongmixay where they are primarily used for breeding (with mahouts hoping to sell calves to the growing tourism industry). The ECC not only shelters male elephants despite the high security risk this involves but it also implements a reconversion programme to employ both mahouts and elephants in national protected area patrol teams, in cooperation with the existing ranger team of Nam Pouy. The ECC management staff have formed very strong bonds with mahouts, including in Hongsa and Thongmixay. It has supported the mahout community through the Mahout Association. While the end of a beloved time when elephants and mahouts lived happily in their small village leaves much to be regretted, these mahouts strongly believe that their old lifestyle belongs to the past and want to move forward. The idealistic village life described by Lainé (2018) is not even known to mahouts in their 30–40s. It was the life of their parents: people who are now most likely in their 60s.

Ecosystem

The important question here is, where do you—as a camp—keep your elephants? Elephants at the ECC enjoy natural food on a very large land concession that offers them all the plant species they need to feed on and to medicate, when needed. The motto of the ECC is: “Rather than taking elephants from their natural home into urban tourist areas, we take YOU to THEM, in their undisturbed natural environment”.2 We know that natural food in some tourist areas is not enough both in quantity and in quality. These areas are not always an elephants’ ecosystem. In contrast, Sayaboury’s Nam Tien, where the ECC is located, is the natural habitat of these elephants. Our elephants are in excellent shape according to our mahouts, as well as in the professional opinions of international elephant specialists and vets.

Capture of wild elephants has been banned by the Laotian government in the 1970s (Csuti 2006; Pimmanrojnagool and Wanghongsa 2002; Sukumar 2003). In Thongmixay district, Sayaboury province, it is common, even nowadays, to release female elephants in the vicinity of the villages so that they can mate with wild males. We support this practice and actually do bring some of our female elephants to be impregnated by these roaming wild sires. We respect the local tradition and actively promote it so that it is kept alive. The only location where this is still possible in Laos is Thongmixay. Hongsa has no wild forest, and no wild elephants. As a model for all captive elephants in Laos, the idea stated by Lainé (2018) is not viable.

The Shared Life of Elephants, Humans and Plants

Removing Elephants from Villages

The ECC merely acts on the demand of the elephant owners in Laos. They are looking to sell their charges as there is no sustainable future in keeping them. This situation was completely different before the logging quotas were put in place, about 2.5 years ago.

Artificially Recreate Herds of Elephants

We do not agree with Lainé (2018) that the recreation of elephant herds is artificial. In fact, the herds form naturally. The ECC just gives the opportunity for the herd to form. The pending question here is whether a conservation centre employing mahouts and their families, conserving their ancient knowledge, and releasing elephants in their natural ecosystem (as promoted by Lainé) is a bad solution. Lainé states that elephants are capable of feeding themselves because they are allowed to forage in their natural habitat. The ECC makes sure that elephants that are deemed unfit to be released are not integrated in the re-wilding project. It simply proposes solutions to a changing landscape of elephant ownership, handling and care. Perhaps the arrival of the hand tractor and cars or trucks for transportation, which are much easier to operate and certainly less dangerous, could be considered the largest threat to the village life as described by Lainé.

We agree with Lainé that a current trend in elephant management has become elephantocentric in its rejection of traditional knowledge to the extent that mahouts are put at risk and, perversely given elephantocentric claims, the elephants’ welfare is diminished.

However, as mentioned earlier, we find it extremely unfortunate that Lainé chose the ECC to base his arguments against this trend on. Because we feel that the ECC and its precursor, ElefantAsia, have led the way in helping mahout communities manage the inevitable transition from a village-based lifestyle, both on their own terms and for the benefit of their elephants.