An open letter to PETA on elephant welfare in Thailand

Through our fundraising initiatives and funding of many charitable organisations we have strived for many years to re-educate handlers and to fund vital conservation projects for Thailand’s captive and wild elephant population. 
Since 2001, The King’s Cup Elephant Polo has raised close to US$2 million. This money is distributed to The Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation (GTAEF) and is used to fund several projects. These projects are extensive and far reaching but are focused into three main categories which are: 
1. Captive elephant welfare: 
– To promote ethical and non-abusive work with elephants in captivity. 
2. Wild elephant protection: 
– To partner with like-minded conservationists to protect wild elephants.
– To develop projects that ensure the existence and safety of wild elephants in Southeast Asia.
–     Work to minimise human-elephant conflict by working with communities to find ways to     defuse situations in a manner that is safe for humans and elephants.
3.    Scientific research and education: 
    – To provide a controlled and safe environment for ethical and non-invasive research into Asian elephants.
– To promote conservation.
We continue to be committed to the well-being of all elephants living both within our organisation and of the wider population of all domestic elephants living in Thailand. These elephants, though they have been retired from arduous work, have nevertheless been domesticated and cannot simply be released into the wild to fend for themselves, not least for a lack of wild habitat to sustain them. 
The elephants in our care and those that participate in the King’s Cup Elephant Polo Tournament have all been micro-chipped and DNA tested to ensure that they have been bred in captivity and not taken from the wild. These elephants have been hand-reared are therefore used to human interaction, moreover, elephants receive no formal “training” to play polo or any other activity. At all our facilities we work with the best scientific and veterinary advice to ensure that the activities we provide represent an improvement in the life of the elephants. 
One of the main recipients of funds raised by the 2018 King’s Cup Elephant Polo is the Target Training Positive Reinforcement programmes. Set up five years ago, these training workshops offer an approach that focuses on training captive elephants to undergo veterinary treatment in a safe and stress-free environment for both the elephant and veterinarian. This ultimately aims to educate the mahouts about alternative handling methods and removing punishment from the equation. 
These workshops have now reached, at our cost, over 400 mahouts, veterinarians and trainers across seven South East Asian countries, responsible between them for thousands of elephants, and we are proud to see positive training techniques adopted by the official trainers of the governments with the two largest captive elephant populations, Thailand and Myanmar.
Since 2012, we have provided funding support to non-profit organisations involved in wildlife rescue and forest conservation. The funding protects part of a vital 18,000-hectare forest and wildlife corridor in Cambodia’s Cardamom Mountains allowing wild animals, including elephants, to roam free without the risk of human intervention. A large proportion of this funding is used to pay for the construction of ranger stations and anti-poaching patrols as well as the funding of two teams of full time rangers.
In Ban Ta Klang, the village in the Northeast from where many traditional mahouts originate, we fund two full time English teachers to teach at five schools, currently reaching 624 children between the ages of Kindergarten to Secondary level 6. This equips the future generation of would-be mahouts with education and options to choose a path other than becoming mahouts. 
While we are always severely disappointed whenever a mahout mistreats an elephant we remain proud of the close to $2 million (Bt62.2 million) raised to date as a result of our efforts for elephant conservation. All of this money will be distributed among the aforementioned projects. 
From open records we see that PETA received $67 million in donations in financial year 2016, we also note that from this $17.5 million was spent on “Professional services and consultants” though a comparatively small amount of $2 million was spent on “Donations to charitable organisations”. It is my feeling that very little of this figure has been spent to directly better the lives of elephants in Thailand. 
While it is easy to speculate from outside looking in about the treatment of elephants in Thailand, we operate within a multifaceted framework in Southeast Asia which is steeped in tradition and cultural beliefs. It is our role to work within Thai society to provide the best possible outcome for all Asian elephants and to work to re-educate and undo century’s old tradition of mahouts using a khor bull-hook to coerce elephants. I feel strongly that we cannot and should not stop raising vital money to construct an alternative livelihood for mahouts and their families in an effort to safeguard the conservation and welfare of elephants both captive and wild. We are committed to leading a sustainable and realistic approach to ending elephant cruelty in Thailand and across Southeast Asia. 
We once again invite PETA to partner with us in this endeavour which will ultimately create the best possible outcome for elephants across Asia. 

Stephen Chojnacki is chief commercial officer at Minor International.