It’s not easy to be an elephant these days. African elephants are threatened by the relentless poaching frenzy that is slaughtering over 100 elephants per day throughout Africa. Asian elephants, are critically endangered by rapid habitat loss, causing them to raid croplands in search of food, leading to deadly conflicts with humans, poaching, or capture, and a life of captivity in zoos, tourist shows or logging camps. For us, life as a human is challenging enough. But for elephants, is there any hope?
This was the question I asked myself four years ago when I began my passionate pursuit to understand the critical problems for elephants that are caused by humans. In my work as a filmmaker I have made several films about animal conservation issues and I’m particularly intrigued with the notion of animal consciousness and self-awareness. Mirror self-recognition testing is used to demonstrate self-awareness and it has been tried on several species of animals. The ones that nearly always pass the test are the dolphins, the great apes, and the elephants. In light of the problems we as a species create for these creatures, I sometimes wonder how many of us are self-aware.
Elephants possess all kinds of remarkable abilities and qualities that we would do well to aspire to have ourselves. With the biggest brain of all terrestrial animals, they are smart, empathetic, have strong emotional bonds and family ties, long memories and sophisticated ways of communicating with each other that we are only beginning to understand.
We’ve had a long history with elephants. For 5,000 years they have been used in warfare and industry and essentially helped build early human civilization. But with the advances of our civilization has come the demise of the elephants‘ domain. As a result, human-elephant conflict throughout Asia and Africa has led to an outright interspecies war for food and habitat, causing loss of lives for both species. Asian elephants have been heavily used in the logging industry in Thailand and still in Myanmar, where they are worked as machines, decimating what remains of their forest environment.
At the other end of the spectrum elephants are often the star attraction at zoos, circuses and tourist parks around the world. In some cases they are born in captivity, in other cases they are captured from the wild as young elephants and trained to do tricks, paint pictures, take tourists for rides – all for our amusement. Yet seeing elephants in this way teaches us nothing about their true behavior or natural lives. Is this the future of the human-elephant relationship? My journey to find the answer has led me to Thailand where I have become embroiled in the realities of life as an elephant.
Asian elephants are an endangered animal. There are less than 50,000 left in the world – that’s less than the capacity of an average football stadium. In Thailand where the elephant has been revered for millennia and is a national icon, their numbers dwindle below four thousand. My work here for the past two years has led me from the tourist camps to the gritty underworld of the street-begging elephants and the elephant “business”, to the traditional rural elephant villages eroding from the pressures of modern society, to vast and beautiful wilderness sanctuaries where some elephants may still have a chance.
At present, my team and I are in the process of making two elephant films: one is a story that reflects the human-elephant condition called Elephants Never Forget (See Video Below); the other is about the work of the Elephant Reintroduction Foundation – an innovative organization and initiative of HM Queen Sirikit of Thailand to rehabilitate and release captive elephants to a free life in wild forest habitat. Through these films I hope to express and share not only the awe and wonder that I have experienced spending time with these magnificent creatures, but the tragedy that awaits if we, collectively as humans, don’t do something to stop the exploitation, abuse and slaughter of one of Nature’s greatest creations. There are solutions to the elephants’ plight and our awareness is the first step. Life as a human would certainly be far less meaningful if there was no life left for elephants.
Elephants Never Forget
A CanazWest Pictures Inc. independent feature-length film. Promo Credits: directed by Patricia Sims; cinematography and editing by ZO; additional videography by Manwe Darcy and Brent Lewin; with music by Joe Cocker.
Photo Credits
All Photos Are © canazwest pictures inc.
Hi Patricia,
This is terrific! How wonderful that you are working with these magnificent animals. My own work has been largely with wolves and their life-time development. With the help of Gil Namur and others I am now striving to get a book done on the first wolf who shared his life with me (see lupeywolf.com). We are each fortunate to have had other species touch our lives so deeply.
I plan to follow your own work more closely.
Best wishes,
John
Patricia – I found your links through postings from your friend Ashley on the Care2 website. This film is really needed to show the complicated needs of both Captive Elephants and Mahouts and the need for a change in how we view both. I do hope that it can become a full documentary that can be shown World-Wide – for the elephant’s sake. Loss of habitat is one of the biggest problems facing the World today. Increasingly man will have more conflict with animals if something is not done soon… we need the information that your documentary will provide.
A kind person on Care2 suggested that this website might be useful for gaining more funding for your project….
http://www.rockethub.com/learnmore/intro
Perhaps also one of the major supermarket chains that are making inroads into Asia (in a big way) will contribute to funding also… Tesco from the UK and Big C (Casino) from France are very prevalent in Thailand. Also the American 7/11 stores are everywhere … perhaps they will contribute too.
Truly, good luck with your project. I will try to send out some information on email to my friends to make them aware too.
Colette
Dear Colette,
Thank you very much for your suggestions on fund-raising options and your concern for the elephants. We are working very hard right now here in Thailand to get the word out about what is happening for Asian elephants here and everywhere. I will be posting more news very soon.
Sincerely,
Patricia
Patricia,
While I certainly appreciate the work you are doing to help preserve these beautiful creatures. I wouldn’t say that a captive elephant and his master have a mutual love and respect for one another when his master is carrying a bull hook designed to injure the elephant. While no use of the bull hook is shown in this video some violence towards these animals is with a child beating a baby elephant into submission and trained elephants performing tricks they wouldn’t do on their own it seems to me that while Asian cultures may revere the species they are not treating them as revered beings. Until this is changed the best that many of the Thailand elephants can hope for is to be taken care of fed and not treated to badly. Using them as pack animals is much more humane than training them to beg on the streets or play with hula hoops. I can only hope the future Kings of Thailand, although a figurehead in many respects, can help preserve these animals because when the current King speaks the people do listen.
Thank you to everyone for your comments. I am grateful for the feedback and insights. The age-old relationships between people and elephants in Asia, and specifically in Thailand, are very complex.
It is difficult to imagine that someone who could use a bull-hook, could also love their elephant. But this is the paradox of the human-elephant relationship, and what we are trying to unravel in our work.
One thing is for certain, elephants evoke an ineffable compassion within many of us. This is a powerful catalyst for people to work together on solutions to protect elephants everywhere.
Hi Patricia
Thank You for your Beautiful artical and video.I felt every emotion.
I had the pleasure of visiting with an elephant at our city zoo, she stood there looking at me and I was looking at her, and then I looked into one of her eye’s, my heart filled with such Love and Compassion for her, and what I saw was Beauty, Wisdom, and an old Soul as if she had crossed over time and space for that moment to say “Do you get it now?”
Thank You Patricia for sharing what you are here to do, and give my Love to all the elephants you meet along the way
My life as a human will be forever enriched by the work of those that seek to discover the mysteries of our planet’s fellow creatures, and then lay it out so beautifully for the rest of us to understand.
Thank you, Patricia.
What a world we live in? Beautiful story and a gorgeous piece of film making! It is so sad to hear these stories, how our world is getting too big, and so many suffer for it, so many creatures. Thank you for sharing this wonderful and inspiring story……I won’t forget it!
Some where between my world of conspicuous privilege and the abject poverty of the waste majority of the rest of the human species that live alongside the elephant populations lies the answers and direction we need to take to save these beautiful animals and all the animals around them. I try to envision answers for these devastating questions and events to be found in our collective voice of wisdom and understanding. Thank you Patricia to contributing greatly to this chorus.
Today I finished reading “Water for Elephants” and I was moved to tears by the cruelty we as a species have inflicted on this noble living being. Thank you for your words and the powerful images of your film that I hope will touch countless numbers of people.
Tears and heartfelt thanks Patricia. Will definitely share!
thank you, Patricia, for your article. I share your passion regarding elephants and have asked similar questions myself. It is difficult to understand why we do what do to elephants (and all wildlife) and how many of us don’t even question human behavior or our role in endangering elephants (as well as other species) towards extinction let alone treatment of those endangeered individuals that are still among us. How ironic it is that humans are supposed to be the evolved species and yet no other species dominates humans because this is not instinctual behavior, The dominance displayed by humans is learned not instinct. Thank you for sharing your words and helping to educate us.
Hi Patricia,
I just want to express our thanks from the Life As A Human team for choosing to be on our pages. The work you are doing is so important … it’s a privilege for us to have you.
Please let us know if there is anything we can do to help you along this amazing journey. We look forward to following your progress and reading more about your work with the elephants!
Cheers,
Gil