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Unchaining Captive Elephants in Nepal | National Geographic


3m read
·Nov 11, 2024

I think the most memorable release that I was ever present at is when we put five elephants into a brand new 4-acre Corral. The elephants moved forward by a few feet, all tight together, with the babies underneath them. Then the babies started squealing, screaming, squealing, and then the Mother started trumpeting and stamping their feet and thumping their trunk on the ground. It's like they knew what was going on; it was amazing. But their joy, the joy that they show when they are freed from chains, is, it's in, it's not, you cannot mistake it. This is pure joy.

Okay, no, no, no, no, this is S. She lives at Tiger Tops Elephant Camp. She used to live in chains; she doesn't any longer, but these are the chains that she used to wear. "Sit, S, good girl," she says. "I don't want it on, good girl." Alright, she used to have this chain on her ankle almost 24/7. It's very heavy, it's harmful to her ankle, detrimental to most physically and psychologically. She's no longer chained; she now lives chain-free in a chain-free corral 24/7.

When I came to Asia to look at the situation for captive-held elephants, the first thing that I noticed is that they're all living in chains. When they're not doing their duty, which would be taking people for rides, elephant back safaris, or in walking in festivals, they are chained. Many times that's 18, 19 hours of every day. I proposed chain-free corrals. I proposed that we take an area, a wild area, and put up a solar-powered electric fence—something that's inexpensive, run by the sun—which is important because, of course, in Nepal, you get maybe four or five hours of electricity every day.

So we started with one small 1-acre corral, and it took off. Within a year, the Government of Nepal asked me to build a corral for every one of their 64 elephants. In about a six-month time, we built 54 corrals.

So we're here in a remote location in the buffer zone of Chitwan National Park, and here is one of our early installations of chain-free corral. It's two corrals, one acre each, and there's one elephant that lives here, Sanro Pad. He's an adult bull in his early 50s. He's a great success because although he has very large ivory, he's never damaged the fence.

It is a pulsating energy, 10 volts, so it's not very strong; it can't kill anyone. It definitely gives you a little zap, and you know you back off. The advantage for elephants is that they are bare-skinned like us, so when they touch it, they're touching their bare skin. They feel it; they don't want to touch it again.

Namaste. Namaste. Namaste.

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That did not work. The corrals were far too small. I wasn't happy because now that left us with nine bulls that were not going to be chain-free.

I came here not knowing what I was going to be doing here, and I honestly don't know what the endgame is. Ultimately, I would like to see all captive elephants in a natural setting—nobody riding on them, nobody controlling them. How that's going to manifest, I can't say, but I believe it's possible.

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