The elephant camp was established in 2006, for around 10 years. The villagers have simple lifestyle.
It’s the tourism business aiming to help elephants and support the elephant owner’s earnings. Toonglakorn village is located in Tambon Kuet Chang Amphoe Mae Tang, Chiang Mai that takes around 1 hour from the city. It’s a small village with 50 residences embraced with the nature and valley. They are gregarious and share the relatives-like reciprocity. Agriculture and farming are their careers. Some
raise elephants and earn a living by the use of elephant in hauling logs. However, at present, the government is promoting the forest conservation and afforestation. For this reason, it stops elephant in logging operation. Among the owner of the elephants, this results in the earnings shortage to support family and to take care of the elephants. The owners who have profound family-like relationship with their elephants are obliged to sell them to the capitalists for circus show or work in the big elephant camps. Nonetheless, some owners who don’t sell their elephants are struggling for a survival. They have to take on the household expenses and the feeding cost of an elephant that eats around 250-300 kilograms/day. Thus, to survive, they walk the elephants around the city and business areas to sell banana and sugar cane for people to feed the elephants. This has become a great issue of the elephant todays. With these reasons above, they lead to the establishing of Toonglakorn Elephant Rescue Centre with the aim to support elephants and the owners of their livings and to provide more jobs for the villagers so they don’t have to leave their families for jobs in the city. The concept of our elephant camp is to promote the elephant care and happiness through various activities, such as feeding, walking, bathing, and mud playing. They are the nature activities with elephants, not a fancy performances that go against the elephants’ natures like two-leg standing, cycling, kicking the ball, or drawing. If our objectives match with your favors, we would like to take the chance to invite you to experience and support our small elephant camp. We operate daily at 8:30 am. – 4:00 pm.
