yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

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.

Foreign speech.

Foreign speech.

Foreign speech.

Foreign speech.

Foreign speech.

Foreign speech.

Foreign speech.

Foreign speech.

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.

[Applause]

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

More Articles

View All
From Ashes to Ink | Explorer
I do tend to get tattoos pretty much when I’m either stressed out or making a big change in my life. They help relieve a lot of stress for me. There’s so many different reasons for people to get tattoos; they’ve gotten tattoos too to fit in, or they’ve go…
The Nernst equation | Applications of thermodynamics | AP Chemistry | Khan Academy
We already know how to calculate cell potential when the reactants and products are in their standard states. However, what if that’s not the case? We can find cell potential when reactants and products are not in their standard states by using the Nernst…
LC natural response intuition 1
We’re going to talk about the natural response of an LC circuit, inductor-capacitor circuit, and this is an interesting one. This is a circuit that has two energy storage elements. In the past videos, we’ve done one energy storage element, either a C or a…
Business cycles and the production possibilities curve | APⓇ Macroeconomics | Khan Academy
What we have here are two different visualizations of a country’s output at different points in time. You might recognize that here on the left, we have a production possibilities curve for this country. It’s a very simple country that either produces for…
Newton's third law conceptual worked example
Block A with mass m sits on top of block B with mass 2m in an elevator. The elevator is moving downward and slowing down. All right, when we have this diagram over here, it’s moving downward and slowing down, so that means it’s accelerating upwards. The m…
My 3 Step Guide to Quickly Screen Stocks
Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. In this video, we’re going to be talking about a simple three-step method that I personally use in order to quickly screen stocks. So, we’re not thinking about, you know, potentially making an investment just yet. W…