The struggle to save Asia's elephants

When French explorer Henri Mouhot passed this way in 1861, he found the roads so rugged -- "devil's pathways," he called them -- that the only way to travel was on the back of an elephant, without which "no communication would be possible." His appreciation for the animals grew to be nearly poetic.

"This colossus is no rough specimen of natural handiwork," he wrote, "but a creature of especial amiability and sagacity, designed for the service of man." Back then, every village had elephants -- some as many as 100.

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Luke Duggleby for The Wall Street Journal

Elefantasia provides a free after-care kit for every elephant the vets examine and register.

But a century and a half later, the colossus is in peril. Across much of Asia, working elephants are being rapidly replaced by trucks and tractors. In Thailand, some elephants and their drivers, called mahouts -- once prized as royal cavalry -- are now reduced to begging. In Laos, the population of captive elephants has fallen by as much as a fifth over the past decade, to below 500, and as logging quotas are tightened, demand for their services seems likely to decline further.

Elefantasia, a French nonprofit elephant-conservation organization working in Laos, sees an opportunity in this. Hauling logs is dangerous work for elephants, and discourages owners from breeding their animals -- pregnancy lasts nearly two years, during which the female can't work. That leads to an aging, sickened population. Elefantasia works closely with owners and mahouts to improve veterinary care, and promotes breeding by seeking sustainable alternatives to logging -- namely, in Laos's growing tourist sector.

The Asian elephant, which once ranged from Syria to China, isn't as large as its African counterpart. It also has smaller ears and less hair, and is less likely to have tusks. At the time of Mr. Mouhot's journey, the elephant population in Thailand alone may have been 100,000, estimates Richard Lair, an American elephant authority who works as an adviser at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang. Now, according to the WWF, the number across Asia might not be much more than 40,000 -- 16,000 in captivity and as few as 25,600 in the wild, primarily in India.

While changing economies have reduced captive-elephant numbers, wild elephants are threatened both by the growth of human settlements, which squeezes their forest home, and by poachers who covet their ivory tusks. In Laos, where recent estimates put the wild-elephant population at 700, poaching is increasing. In March, five elephants were slain for their ivory in a wildlife sanctuary that is popular with tourists. Experts say the country is a key transit point for illegally traded wildlife in Southeast Asia, with China as a leading buyer.

Elefantasia

Elefantasia offers donors opportunities that range from "adopting" a baby elephant to supporting a mahout family. The organization also runs elephant treks in the Sayaboury province of Laos and operates a small museum in the Laotian city of Luang Prabang.

National Animal Health Center

Ban Khounta

Box 3804

Vientiane, Laos

856-20-502-5326

www.elefantasia.org

As alarming as the decline in numbers is how the remaining wild elephants live, mostly in isolated herds that are cut off from one another by development, inside tracts of forest. It translates into less mixing of the gene pool and a greater likelihood of inbreeding, with its risk of hereditary diseases and birth defects. "That's when population biologists start to panic," says Janine Brown, an expert on Asian elephant reproduction at the National Zoo in Washington.

Communist-ruled Laos, sparsely populated and sidelined by globalization, should be a haven for the endangered species. A 13th-century ruler named it the Land of a Million Elephants, and its people venerate the elephant as a symbol of power and spirituality. In 1909, a French traveler found townspeople accustomed to elephants milling through the streets. "They are as inoffensive as our own cows in France," she wrote. As recently as two decades ago, it was possible to see elephants hauling rice and people between villages in the rugged hinterland.

Even today, timber companies rely on intrepid elephants to extract valuable hardwood logs from remote hillsides. But with its forests in decline, Laos is trying to put the brakes on logging.

Conservationists say this could be a blessing for elephants -- if more can eventually be employed in tourism. Tourism offers a way to regenerate the stock of captive elephants, by holding out the promise of a payday for owners who allow females to breed. (Across Laos, only 10 captive elephants are females below the age of 10, so an acute shortage of breeding-age cows -- a calf reaches adulthood at age 12 to 15 -- lies ahead.) A cute elephant calf, of no use to loggers, is a gold mine for tourism, says Elefantasia co-founder Sebastian Duffillot. "The day after it's born it starts making money," he said.

Founded in 2006, Elefantasia concentrates its conservation efforts on the northern province of Sayaboury, where the vast majority of working elephants live. Its vets, who travel the region during the November-to-June dry season, also help keep official records; all sales of elephants, for example, are supposed be registered with the government. Their task is complicated by the nomadic life of logging elephants, their own spotty databases and rutted dirt roads that are as impassable in the wet season as during Mr. Mouhot's time.

On a recent afternoon, the organization's mobile unit -- a white Ford Ranger -- pulled up outside a house. In the front yard, Hongchang, a 56-year-old female elephant, stood under a fruit tree, her hind leg tethered by a metal-link chain. A crowd gathered to watch the vets, two French and one Lao, all wearing green Elefantasia T-shirts. The three, who began as volunteers with the organization and are now part-time employees, inspected the animal and spoke with her owner.

Bertrand Bouchard, one of the French vets, stared at a discolored bulge around the elephant's stomach, where mahouts fasten harnesses used to drag heavy logs. It appeared to be an abscess -- an inflammation where pus gathers -- the third that Mr. Bouchard had seen that day. He pushed down on Hongchang's thick gray skin; the bulge felt like a stone under a blanket.

"We have to treat this," he said. "If it's an abscess that goes deeper it could be really dangerous."

That wasn't all. An overgrown toenail on Hongchang's right hind leg had become infected and would need treatment. The owner, My Maphun, explained that he had pulled her off a logging job the previous month because of the foot wound. But he shook his head no when asked whether they could drain the abscess, apparently fearing it would extend the furlough.

It's a fairly common reaction among owners, who have paid upward of $12,000 for a full-grown elephant. As logging quotas in Laos are scaled back, they feel an added urgency to push their elephants harder to earn their keep.

In the past, mahouts in Laos treated sick elephants with natural remedies, but much of this traditional knowledge has seeped away. Today, vets say, imported antibiotics -- sold over the counter -- are given to elephants without checking the right dosage or possible side effects. Far from discouraging the practice, local livestock officials often suggest drug combinations based on hearsay.

Lifelong mahouts have strong bonds with their elephants and are keenly attuned to their suffering, said Gilles Maurer, the other founder of Elefantasia. Those who mistreat their animals are usually younger and in some cases are rotated by an owner between different elephants, just like a driver for a taxi company.

But modern medicine is a whole new ballgame for even the most dedicated mahouts. "The traditional knowledge didn't say how many milliliters of antibiotics you have to give to an elephant," Mr. Maurer said.

As Mr. Bertrand and his colleagues circled the infected toe, Hongchang chomped calmly on palm-tree branches piled in the yard. The mahout carefully looped the chain around her hind legs and stepped back. Then, Mr. Bertrand went to work with a large needle, a crop-sprayer full of liquid disinfectant and a pair of scissors, cutting away at the infected flesh.

As he cut, the mahout prodded Hongchang with a stick and grunted at her. It seemed to work. The injured elephant snorted and tried to retract her foot, but soon relented. The vets finished their work and dunked her leg in a metal dish of soapy disinfectant.

The operation over, Vatsana Chanthavong, the Lao vet, gave Mr. My a first-aid kit in a clear plastic box and explained about follow-up care. In addition to the free treatment, every owner that the team visits receives the kit, which includes vitamins, syringes, deworming pills and giant cotton swabs for cleaning wounds.

Strictly speaking, Ms. Vatsana, 25, isn't a vet. She's studying agronomy in Vientiane, the Laotian capital, with a specialization in animal science. That's because Laos has no veterinary school, though some livestock officials trained as vets in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Elefantasia, which has 10 employees, relies heavily on volunteer vets from France and other countries.

Its next major project is to build an elephant hospital in Sayaboury's provincial capital that can provide routine and emergency care, as well as train a new generation of animal doctors.

Land already has been allocated by local authorities, and now Mr. Duffillot is looking for sponsors to donate equipment, including an ultrasound imaging machine that costs $10,000. The organization, whose annual budget is only $180,000, has backers that include individuals, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Global Environmental Fund, pharmaceutical company Bayer HealthCare and some foreign embassies in Laos; it gets no money from the Laotian government. "We're getting quite good at getting small things for free," Mr. Duffillot said.

The ultrasound, whose uses include detecting pregnancies, is a crucial tool. Without a turnaround in breeding, the odds look grim for Laos's working elephants. On average, five to 10 captive elephants die annually, while only one or two are born, according to Elefantasia's data. And, as more female elephants pass the age of 30, when the National Zoo's Ms. Brown says pregnancy becomes less likely, there are fewer chances at success. Zoos in the U.S. and Europe have struggled to reproduce their elephants; some have turned to artificial insemination. In 2007, Thailand became the first Asian country to successfully breed an elephant this way; the calf is at the Lampang conservation center.

For Mr. Duffillot, the answer for Laos lies not in a test tube but in the community of elephant owners. With the right incentives, he argues, owners would be happy to let their females mate and produce a valuable calf.

Under a baby-bonus contract drafted by Elefantasia, owners can hand over their pregnant females so they can give birth in a sanctuary attended by vets and stay there with their baby for another year or more. In return, the owner would receive a free hand-tractor as a sweetener and retain ownership of the female and calf. Elefantasia would try to find work for both animals at an Elefantasia-approved camp where visitors could pet, ride and gawk at them.

"The aim is to create the new generation of the species in Laos," said Mr. Duffillot. "But we don't want them to (work in) logging, so that must be agreed in the contract." Under terms of the draft contract, an owner who reneges would forfeit a 20% stake in both elephants to the organization.

Thailand offers an example: Around half its 2,700 domestic elephants work in tourism, primarily in camps; that compares with fewer than 10% of Laos's captive elephants. A generation ago, Thai elephants also slogged through forests pulling logs, says Mr. Lair of the Thai Elephant Conservation Center. A logging ban in 1989 forced a switch to other employment, fortunately at a time of rapid tourism growth. "If logging goes in Laos what else are you going to use them for? You can't keep them in backyards as pets," said Mr. Lair.

But tourism isn't a panacea for captive elephants, say experts. Not all are suited to it, and some camps abuse their animals. Still, letting elephants loose in the wild, an alternative that some advocate, is impossible without extensive, properly maintained and guarded parks and sanctuaries.

"It would be great to say elephants should be free and happy and to give them lots of land," said Ms. Brown of the National Zoo. "But the fact is that the world doesn't work that way."

Bounlay Thamamavong owns a male elephant that, at age 17, has reached his prime working years. His brother works as its mahout, a typical division of labor in rural Laos. The elephant brings in around $2,650 a year in lease payments from loggers and the sale of ivory from his tusks, which are sawn off and regrow. (The ban on ivory sales applies only to international trade.)

But as logging companies in Sayaboury begin scaling back, Mr. Bounlay has begun to think the unthinkable: getting out of the business. His late father -- who before retiring had owned three elephants -- had advised him never to sell, Mr. Bounlay said, "but if there's no work to do then it's not worth keeping an elephant." His wife, he added, reckons they should sell now and use the proceeds to buy a car. It's tempting. "I see other people with cars and I think, I don't want to work in the forest," he said.

While some owners are happy to trade up, others say they'd rather hang onto their elephants and put them out to pasture if tourism doesn't pick up the slack. Keeping an elephant isn't so expensive assuming there's forest for them to feed on, as there is in Laos -- and Mr. Duffillot said there's an intangible magic to having an elephant that runs deep in this traditional country, only slowly emerging into modernity.

Messrs. Maurer and Duffillot saw that firsthand in 2002 when they organized a three-month elephant caravan across Laos, an event that was the genesis of Elefantasia. Villagers showed up in droves to see and touch an animal that is known for wisdom and strength and is said to confer longevity on those who pass under it. Rare white elephants -- Laos has two -- are a symbol of national prosperity and peace.

Since 2007, Elefantasia has organized an annual three-day elephant fair in Sayaboury that attracts tens of thousands of visitors, mostly Lao, who come to watch displays of strength and ingenuity. It's another nudge for owners and mahouts to see the potential for tourism to employ their elephants.

Like all conservationists, Mr. Duffillot believes that biodiversity is worth fighting for. He's also stirred by the bond between man and animal. "Elephants are dear to the heart of all Lao people and that's why we're here," he said.

On the next-to-last day of their four-day mission, the vets stopped by a house to check on a female elephant. Her owner had heard about Elefantasia's breeding program and wanted a piece of the action. The previous month, he explained, he had let her loose in the forest where wild males roam, hoping nature would take its course. Florence Labatut, the other French vet, inspected the elephant, in good shape at 31 except for the loss of sight in one eye. Without an ultrasound, though, there was no way to know whether she was pregnant. Ms. Labatut prescribed vitamins and rest and told the owner to stay in touch.

The terms of the Elefantasia contract aren't yet all settled. It's also contingent on opening the planned elephant hospital and finding a nearby sanctuary for expectant mothers, as well as hooking up with tour operators to monetize the resulting calf. Then there's the question of whether to buy insurance to cover them against the death of the mother while giving birth.

Ms. Labatut is hopeful the barriers can be overcome. "It could work," she said, "if we have the money."