The Tuli elephant saga brought home to South Africans some of the controversies around the training of elephants. In Thailand, domesticated elephants have helped build up ecotourism. Yet they lead a precarious existence. Chris van der Merwe talks to Asian elephant expert Richard Lair about domesticating wild animals.
American-born Richard Lair (58) has been “crazy about elephants” since seeing one for the first time when he was three at the San Francisco Zoo. A film-maker, he narrowed his focus to exclusively producing wildlife documentaries two decades ago. His investigative book, Gone Astray, covers all 11 elephant-keeping countries of Asia and is today a standard reference.
Lair has little faith in “the planet being saved through conservation”. However, through involvement in animal welfare, he believes he can help to alleviate suffering, and that’s what he is focusing on. He is presently championing the establishment of an international mahout training school in Lampang, and co-authoring a practical guide on elephant care with one of Thailand’s leading elephant veterinarians.
Have you been following the protracted Tuli elephant saga in South Africa — sub-adult elephants exported from a game reserve in Botswana to South Africa, to be domesticated, and the ensuing international outcry over their alleged maltreatment by mahouts imported from Asia?
The animal rightists and welfarists have won the day, and quite rightly so. I saw the video footage of the treatment of those elephants. The Indonesian mahouts involved were clearly incompetent; they should not have been hired in the first place. But I must add: it is not possible to train each and every elephant, even most elephants, without causing some pain. But that pain has to be short, sharp and in a place where it does no lasting physical harm. It is used only when the elephant is testing the mahout, when the elephant is breaking rules it fully understands.
What is the role of tourism in keeping mahoutship alive?
Historically, the main form of employment for elephants was transportation. That has gone. Logging was banned over a decade ago in Thailand, after mudslides and flooding from steep hillsides denuded of trees killed a lot of people — The fact is that today tourism offers the only viable employment option for elephants, like it or not.
Sometimes a spectator is killed during elephant shows.
We can only speculate as to what goes wrong. Some elephants are dangerous all the time, like a violent criminal in a penitentiary. If they get a chance to kill a guard, they will. And why not? They’re wild animals; it’s their right. But it’s a highly individual thing. Some elephants need a trigger to become violent: fatigue, noise, or vibration — I would not walk up to a domesticated elephant I don’t know without first asking its mahout’s permission.
What is meant by “domesticated elephants”?
Teaching people about elephants is like teaching children about sex. For a few years, raising children, you have to say: “Well, babies come into the world because mommy and daddy love each other.” But at some point you have to explain what a penis, sperm, a vagina and an egg are. Sure, give the kids their Dumbo and Babar; tell them these giants are gentle and kind. That’s largely true, especially about cow elephants. The facts are that elephants have never been selectively bred to change their behaviour and that males are at times driven by testosterone.
How did you get involved with elephants?
I’ve been crazy about elephants since childhood. As a filmmaker, I narrowed my focus to producing wildlife conservation documentaries exclusively two decades ago. Initially, I couldn’t look at elephants in chains. That changed, for several reasons. One was being charged and nearly killed by a rhino in the jungle. I’d had polio as a teenager, couldn’t run and wasn’t very good at climbing trees. After that incident, I asked myself what I was doing traipsing after large and dangerous animals in the wild. Also, I realised there were 15 000 domesticated elephants in Asia and another 1 000 in the West. I became increasingly fascinated by the long history of human coexistence with elephants, and got deeply involved in animal welfare.
Where are elephants found for domestication?
The secondary growth that follows logging of primary forests is excellent elephant habitat. Logging forces wild elephants out of the woodwork and sometimes results in a population explosion. Once logging has been completed, selling concessions for plantations, often for palm oil, is needed to replace the money that came from logging. Elephants love palm trees, so they started crop-raiding. What do you do with crop-raiding elephants? Do you shoot them, or capture them?
Could “tame” elephants not be reintroduced into the wild?
Most domesticated elephants released into a pristine habitat would survive. They’re well pre-adapted for release. The catch is, there are so few places into which to release them. They’re not afraid of people and, if released in a national park near human habitation, they may start crop-raiding and be shot, or poisoned — or they might kill a villager. Either is a catastrophe. How ethical is elephant domestication? People who care for elephants are faced with a grave, ongoing ethical dilemma. Once you’ve captured or bought an elephant, or somehow caused it to be born in captivity, every ensuing choice you make is one between the lesser of two evils. Choosing clearly between two evils implies being able to see both sides to any issue and being able to carefully, soul-searchingly, weigh the balance. If you train an elephant, it will necessarily suffer a degree of discomfort, pain and stress. But if you end up with a well-behaved elephant, the animal will have much more freedom — and that’s the lesser of the two evils.
What methods are used to train an elephant?
Let’s make no bones about it, a certain amount of cruelty and pain is necessary in – this is a nasty word – “breaking” or “rough-breaking” an elephant. In Asia, I haven’t seen a regime that has not involved some sort of torment. There’s usually a bit of blood, sleep deprivation, really confusing the animal, all those in some sort of combination — If the elephant is full, it becomes feisty; if it’s kept just a little bit hungry, it tends to follow the rules more.
The most critical phase is initial training. In Northern Thailand, calves are usually separated from the mother at the age of three, the age when elephants are normally weaned in the wild, which is thus the optimum. The elephant is put into a training kraal, where it’s trussed very tightly in a tiny enclosure. Straps and ropes are used to totally immobilise it. It’s taught to lift its right foot and then its left foot — to take the chain hobbles — so that it can be confined to one place at any time.
The next essential thing is to teach the animal to keep perfectly still. You may not like having a wild animal with its own spirit freeze instantly, on command, however remarkable it is that humans are able to teach it. But in Asia today, one in three elephants is now involved in tourism, which means you have to take responsibility for the lives of visitors.
Where do you draw the line in coercion?
An elephant in Burma killed 17 mahouts before itself dying a natural death. How are you going to respond to an animal like that? You have to use strength, superior speed and, for want of a better word, pain. But it’s like aikido, using absolutely the least amount. In the long run, that’s kinder to the elephant. Let’s say you have an ironclad rule never to cause any elephant any pain, stress or trauma. That would mean keeping the elephant in an enclosure 24 hours a day.
The mahout is often cast as the villain. Is that fair?
Today, there is some illegal logging within Thai borders, with elephants working under great pressure in the middle of the night, being fed amphetamines to keep them going. But when logging under the traditional methods and not overworked, elephants realise that if they follow the rules, the mahout is going to cut some slack and when work is done they will be taken out for a bath and to be chained to a tree, where there are nice things to eat. It’s a “social contract”.
Are the traditional skills of mahoutship being lost?
In the old days, professional mahouts had an inordinate amount of skill. It took years to work your way up from being a foot mahout. You worked putting the chains around logs, you cut grass and did the dirty work, before you got to sit on the neck of an elephant. You went off into the forest for three to four months, with half a dozen elephants and fellow mahouts. At night, you sat around the fire, learning from the masters. In Thailand, master mahouts were said to have a spiritual power, a kind of charisma, and indeed they do. We have a huge problem in Thailand with young mahouts who don’t come from elephant-keeping families.
What’s the best way forward in elephant domestication?
What I’d like to see in mahout training centres is a fusion of Western and Eastern techniques, with the objective of minimising the elephants’ trauma. Upgrading of mahout skills is key. Otherwise the surviving elephants will end up — as they have in the United States, Europe and Japan — video-monitored behind high walls with hydraulically operated doors. I’m for free, as opposed to protected, contact. But then you need good keepers and mahouts and, unfortunately, those are ever harder to find.