EAI has been “boots on the ground” in Nepal for nearly five years. Initially, much of our efforts were focused on improving welfare for the privately owned elephants used for tourist rides.
We’ve provided free pedicures and husbandry and training advice bi-annually since 2011. But today the safari elephants of Chitwan suffer to the same degree as they did when we first started. As long as tourists pay to ride elephants, the elephants of Nepal will continue to be exploited.
One way for you to help is by supporting groups actively working to influence tour companies to drop elephant safaris from their tour packages. Elephant Watch Nepal is one such group.
Six months ago we found this elephant being walked along a busy highway, in the midday scorching sun, on a 30-mile walk back from a party she’d been hired for.
Today we found her in Sauraha on her way to the tourist ride area.
This old elephant is blind, dehydrated, exhausted, underfed, continually beaten and suffers from deep gouges around her anus from the howdah (saddle) rope.
The owner and mahouts are aware of her injury and how to prevent and treat it. But they do nothing to ease her suffering.