compromised elephant welfare in tourism entertainment. This type of ecotourism
model benefits elephants, mahouts, local villagers, and Thailand’s tourism. ENF’s
success leads to a partnership with the Surin government to build Surin’s elephant
village project which offers mahouts a steady income and lodging to allow ele-
phants to live their lives free from entertaining tourists (Lin 2012 : 207). ENF serves
as an example of where Thailand’s tourism industry should move toward, although
the issue of elephant welfare demands practical implementations in the industry’s
current elephant camps.
Kontogeorgopoulos (2009a,b: 443) argues that the current anthropocentric
camps which allow elephant riding have an important role in the overall welfare of
Thailand’s domesticated elephants because elephant sanctuaries are difficult to
replicate in anything other than an incremental fashion. He states that“critics of the
use of elephants in tourism should acknowledge thefinancial utility and value that
anthropocentric camps create for elephants”because elephant riding in his study
was ranked as the most important component of tourists’visits to the camp. Due to
the competitive business environment of elephant camps in Thailand tourism
industry, moving into the direction of not allowing riding at all poses a problem for
anthropocentric camps and would likely be detrimental to the welfare of the ele-
phants as opposed to beneficial (Kontogeorgopoulos2009a,b: 445). He concludes,
“It appears that in the short term at least, the welfare of working elephants in
Thailand is best served by a combination of continued tourism demand and sus-
tained pressure on camp owners and managers to move camps in a slightly more
ecocentric direction”(Kontogeorgopoulos2009a,b: 445).
On the one hand, tourism supports the welfare of elephants by maintaining their
economic value, but on the other hand, their economic value gives incentive to
continue poaching wild elephants. This calls for an effective captive elephant
management and registration program to identify individual captive elephants and
prevent the ability for the inappropriate registration papers to be used for illegally
obtained elephants (Lair 1997 ). Currently, captive elephants are a commodity by
law under the Draught Animal Act 1939. Captive elephants and wild elephants
should be governed under the Wild Animal Reservation and Protection Act 1992 to
give captive elephants more legal rights in efforts for the conservation of the entire
species.
The Prevention of Animal Cruelty and Provision of Animal Welfare Act was
passed on in November of 2014 as Thailand’sfirst animal welfare law. This law
protects domestic pets, farmed animals, working animals, animals kept for enter-
tainment, wild animals in captivity, and any other animals under human care (Geer
2016 ). The law prohibits owners and carers from treating animals cruelly and
providing inadequate living conditions for the animals. It allows police to enter
homes and businesses to investigate claims of animal abuse and neglect.
Perpetrators can befined up to THB 40,000 and/or a two-year jail sentence. This
law has the ability to protect captive elephants in the tourism industry from cruel
treatment and inadequate welfare conditions. However, the law has garnered crit-
icism for being too vague in its definitions of what exactly constitutes“torture”and
“cruelty”as the law only described what is not considered to be“cruelty”and
9.7 Toward Sustainable Solutions 135