Thailand elephant conservation holiday
How Thailand elephant conservation holiday makes a difference
Environment
Animal welfare
The project’s goal is to establish an alternative to both street begging, and to other forms of tourism, such as performing elephants and elephant rides. The project is run by an NGO, currently caring for 33 elephants that are in the main body of the park. As volunteer numbers increase, as well as funding and awareness, the NGO hopes to steadily increase the number of elephants that they can “adopt” in order to improve their standard of living and quality of life.
The project aims to have the elephants roaming freely in their natural habitat, with their mahouts.
The set up is growing to help to provide the elephants with sustainable food- this involves planting to replace any food taken to feed the elephants, to reduce impact on the local wildlife. There is a vast importance placed on the replanting rainforest scheme.
Environment
Our company is an environmentally responsible one that operates recycling and reusing of waste products. We also offset carbon emissions in our office (gas,electricity, business mileage) and encourage all participants to offset their flight emissions via a carbon offset scheme run in conjunction with Tree Aid.
Participants are advised to use hand wash gel that does not require water. We also advise, during our pre departure course, to take care with water. In many of our destinations, water is precious and expensive.
Community
Meeting local needs
Working closely with the mahouts, this project is aiming to give purpose and income back to their community, encouraging them away from street begging and other forms of circus entertainments for tourists. All volunteers live ion site, with members of the local community employed to feed them and clean the accommodation. An education centre has been built in conjunction with the local community, to help awareness for the plight of the Asian elephant, and why this project is so important. Having volunteers here directly benefits local shops and tourism concerns run by locals.
Cultural sensitivity
We emphasise the importance of showing respect for local people and their customs in our briefing material. Participants will work alongside permanent staff, forming close bonds and getting an insight into real life in rural Thailand.
We send restricted numbers of people at any one time, which minimises the environmental and social impact that the participants have on the destination. Our participants become fully immersed and integrated into the community.
All of our participants receive comprehensive pre-departure briefing. This covers topics on how to be culturally sensitive, how to best look after the environment when in the country and how to stay safe as well as up to date information on the political situation. They are also briefed on how to dispose of waste properly and where possible, to avoid using plastic water bottles as these are not easy to dispose of environmentally.
Thailand elephant conservation holiday
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