This Young Elephant Will Be Isolated and Beaten Until She Learns to Fear Humans Unless We Act Now

This is Suman. She’s six years old. Anyone who knows her past — and the bleak future that could await her — would never again consider riding an elephant.

We know that most of you would never have considered it anyway. But the great majority of people who don’t follow wildlife issues are completely unaware of the problems surrounding elephant riding. It remains an extremely popular tourist attraction in Asia, with hundreds of thousands of tourists flocking to places like India (where we operate) and Thailand every year, in part for the elephant interaction. And most of them mean well.

What’s kept hidden from tourists are the wretched working conditions for these elephants — not to mention the unconscionable abuses they suffer during the so-called training process (referred to in parts of Asia as phajaan, meaning “to crush” — i.e., the crushing of a young elephant’s spirit). And the abuses don’t end for these elephants once they’ve been “tamed,” either.

Most of them suffer decades of overwork, neglect, and continued abuse at the hands of their captors. Then there’s the fact that the few remaining wild elephant populations in Southeast Asia are being adversely affected by the trade’s insatiable hunger for fresh, young elephants. Remember, this species is listed as “Endangered” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. They are already on the brink.




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