Top 3 Ethical Elephant Sanctuaries in Chiang Mai
Northern Thailand is elephant country. In the past, the animals were trained and worked in the lumber industry and in public works. Now, these elephants and their descendants are retired and given a better life in the elephant sanctuaries of the Chiang Mai region. However, some tours still offer elephant riding. Some parks have been turned into real tourist factories, large operations that serve the many tourists that visit each day. PM Tours values the smaller sanctuaries that give the elephants all the room to move around, and that only expose them to small groups of visitors. PM Tours has a strict no-riding policy and only offers ethical elephant tours. Here are our Top 3 of the best elephant sanctuaries in Chiang Mai.
What makes an elephant sanctuary?
The bottom line is the respect with which the animals are treated. At a real elephant sanctuary, nobody rides the elephants, and the elephants are not forcibly made to do anything. They have the freedom to move around and have plenty of room to do so. The elephants are cared for and receive adequate medical treatment when they develop a health problem. Of course, there is no prodding, use of hooks, or hitting the elephants. The mahout is the traditional elephant trainer: mahout means elephant 'rider' or 'keeper,' but in sanctuaries, the meaning of 'caretaker'; is more appropriate. Read more about the role of the elephant in traditional Thai culture HERE.
#3: Happy Elephant Home
This sanctuary has a special place in our hearts because it's the first small elephant sanctuary PM Tours worked with, now more than five years ago. Happy Elephant Home currently has six elephants and only admits 15 visitors per group per day. We consider their fantastic guides Omo and Sandy our friends and can testify that for many of our visitors, they manage every time to turn a good experience into a great one.
Offering half-day and full-day programs, tours at this sanctuary offer a mud bath with the elephants, which protects their skin against the sun. In the afternoon, you accompany them on a trek to the river through a beautiful valley. At the river, the animals love to take a swim and play in the water. You can join them, of course! Other activities include lessons on elephant behavior and health and making elephant medicine. Medicine such as tamarind balls with herbs in them helps their digestion. You also go collect sugar cane and corn, otherwise known as elephant candy (they love it!).
One of the perks of Happy Elephant Home is it's a lovely farmhouse that has a swimming pool so that you can take a refreshing dive during your visit. Happy Elephant Home also stands out because it has a real volunteer program. The minimum stay to work or volunteer at the sanctuary is five days.
Where: Mae Taeng Valley
What: half-day (morning or afternoon) / full-day programs
#2: Elephant Freedom Village
Elephant Freedom Village is an elephant sanctuary founded by our friend Non, a 7th-generation elephant keeper from Karen hill-tribe ethnicity. Non has been working with elephants professionally since he was 15 years old. He has worked at other camps before creating Elephant Freedom Village (with the help of his business partner, Mel, who has a background in veterinary medicine and animal behavior) and saw plenty of injustices both to the elephants and to the elephant keepers at these locations. Even the camps that treated the elephants somewhat well seemed to view the elephant keepers as an afterthought.
Non and Mel believe that Karen culture and elephant welfare go hand-in-hand. After all, the Karen people are the original elephant keepers in Thailand. They currently have twelve elephants on-site but work with the main herd of six elephants. They have one bull elephant, a grandma elephant, a mother elephant, and three babies. (7yo, 4yo, and 1.5yo) The other six elephants are looked after by Non's uncle and are shared with another camp to help cover costs. At night all twelve elephants and their keepers sleep in the same area.
Elephant Freedom Village is a family business and involves most family members of Non. His sister does the accounting, two of his brothers help lead tours (one is also a driver), and most elephant keepers are family/extended family. The goal is the coexistence of elephants with people. There has been so much deforestation and fragmentation of the elephants' natural habitat in the last years, that nowadays people must supervise the elephants when they forage and go about their daily activities. Pesticide farm fields, roads, hunters, other elephants, nearby villages, and the expansion of human residencies have encroached upon the elephant's natural habitat posing a regular threat to the well-being of the elephants. The elephants at Elephant Freedom Village have been born into Non's family for about 200 years already, so they are domesticated and not adapted like wild elephants are.
The main goal of Elephant Freedom Village is to allow elephants to have as natural of a lifestyle as possible within the current environment. They must coexist with people and our keepers in order to thrive.
The staff at this elephant sanctuary are proud Karen hill-tribe villagers, living in nearby Nong Tao Village, on the slopes of Doi Inthanon. Guests are made to feel like family and are integrated as much as possible into activities and interactions with the villagers during the tour. Non always tries to show his guests the village after the tour and encourages them to check out local produce and shops. They grow some fantastic organic vegetables and fruits, which, if you are interested, you can taste and buy from them.
Non's favorite phrase is "We want you to become family for a day".
Elephant Freedom Village will show you the authentic story of Non, the Karen villagers, and their elephants. A beautiful and eye-opening experience.
#1: Into the Wild Elephant Camp
Into the Wild Elephant Camp currently has four elephants. Two of those are rescued from less ethical elephant tours in both Thailand and Myanmar, where they had to give rides and provide entertainment. A baby elephant was also taken from there, saving him from such a life. Now, Piang Dao (or: Little Moon) is a happy youngster with a naughty streak, living at the camp. The youngest of the bunch is Age Gei, who was born at Into the Wild and is now four years old. Age Gei means Give Me Love in the Karen Hill-tribe dialect (and yes, you won't be able to resist!).
The guides at Into the Wild speak English well and are friendly and engaging. Good friends Pai and Siwa started the camp with a wealth of wildlife experience; Pai worked for the Thai Government for over 15 years in their tiger preservation projects, and Siwa is medical wildlife professional. They started the camp to give something back to the elephants, the local hill-tribe community, and their country.
The personal engagement of the people at Into the Wild shows in how they approach the visitor experience, it's important to them that people from outside Thailand understand the history and culture of elephants in their country, and how over time this has evolved and now underpins their philosophy of what makes an ethical elephant sanctuary. They are honest about the practical limits of tackling such a challenge and are open to engaging visitors in discussions on how and why they do things. That they take their ethical responsibility to educate the public seriously is part of what makes them a great sanctuary.
This shows in how visitors take part in a day at the camp: after the drive from Chiang Mai (about 1,5 hours, with a short break) and following a talk by and with owner Pai, the visitors get a chance to let the elephants get to know them by feeding them bananas. What follows is a trek into the forest, with the elephants following the calls of the guides. The elephants then are left to do what they want, such as eating jungle food (skills taught to them by the guides, as they never lived in the wild before) and digging up mud in the local stream to throw unto themselves. The animals return to the camp when they want to, and the visitors follow. Following a delicious lunch prepared by the camp staff, sometimes followed by a mud bath, the visitors can take a swim with the elephants in the refreshing mountain stream next to the camp.
Creating community awareness
The ethical engagement of Into the Wild Elephant Camp does not stop at the treatment of the animals but extends to how they engage with the local hill tribes, which are some of the most impoverished communities in Thailand. Into the Wild has developed a model in which they not only help the community by buying their crops to feed the elephants but also actively employ them at the camp. They use the sanctuary as a community-building tool, exposing the tribal communities to each other, foreign visitors, and new experiences. For example, they organize a summer camp where tribal kids can meet each other while they learn about elephants and other things outside their isolated local village, such as foreign culture, foods, and languages.
Where: Mae Wang National Park
What: half-day (morning) / full-day program
