Speaker 1:

With the best intentions and whatever equipment they could lay their hands on, this medical team is about to attempt an extraordinary operation.

For a start, the patient weights 3 tonnes. Her name is Motala, and she sustained an injury that, if left untreated, will surely kill her.

Dr. Preecha P:

Looking to die. When the animal pain, it show. But pain, we know that. We must give a chance to Motala. For her, she very clever. I know that she don't want to die. We must give her a chance.

Speaker 1:

Thais have taken Motala to their heart. Pledging plenty of money and lots of hope, they've rallied to the cause, willing Motala to walk again. The trouble is, they may just be prolonging the agony; killing this crippled and abused elephant with kindness.

Speaker 3:

[foreign language].

Speaker 1:

Visitors to Thailand discover quickly that the elephant has pride of place in Thai culture; it's a symbol of royalty, religion, and good luck. For centuries the elephant's played a vital working role in national development and even war. Today, there's no doubt they're a tourist drawcard.

Speaker 4:

Now there's about somewhere between 700 and 900 elephants working in tourism, and obviously painting elephants fits quite nicely into any sort of tourist performance. It's light work for the animals, and it's not abusive.

Speaker 3:

[foreign language].

Speaker 1:

Here, in Northern Thailand, this may not be the most dignified duty for a national treasure, but it fits the popular image that elephants are lovable and fun.

Speaker 5:

[foreign language].

Speaker 1:

To get a more accurate picture of the plight of the elephant in Thailand we need to travel to the Burmese border with a hidden camera.

This is the secret life of elephants. Pumped to the eyeballs with amphetamines, they work day and night for their masters, hauling black market timber out of protected forests. Injury is common, and with the drugs, neglect, and overwork, so too is a premature and painful death. Particularly here, on the Burma border, threshold to a war zone and peppered with landmines. The chase for timber is pushing them ever closer to danger.

Speaker 6:

[foreign language].

Speaker 1:

It was Motala. The 38-year-old female had stepped on a landmine, but her young owner, [inaudible], simply couldn't leave her to die slowly and agonisingly on the forest floor. Numbing the wound with painkiller, he forced her to walk on her shattered foreleg.

Speaker 6:

[foreign language].

Speaker 1:

Exhausted, and sapped by pain, it took Motala three days to cover the distance she'd previously travelled in just two hours. When she did eventually emerge, the Thai media swooped on Motala's story. The blanket coverage struck a chord and moved a nation.

Speaker 7:

[foreign language].

Speaker 1:

In a flurry of fundraising 200,000 dollars rolled in and Project Motala was born; elaborate surgery to save the elephant and help her walk again. It would be a world first in the Third World.

Dr. Preecha P:

One reason everybody want to help Motala. She very clever. She know that, when we try to help her, she co-operate. Not angry, is that and she like to show us that she need our help. It's that why many people love Motala; she very sweet.

Speaker 1:

The chief vet at Thailand's elephant hospital, Dr. Preecha Phaungkum was the man who gave the green light for Operation Motala.

Dr. Preecha P:

It shocked everybody in Thailand about why elephant step on landmine it step, and the wound make the people very sorry, very upset that why it has happened like this.

Speaker 1:

While Preecha knows elephants better than anybody in Thailand, he needed a very different type of expertise for what he was about to attempt on Motala.

Dr. Therdchai Jivacate is Thailand's leading orthopaedic surgeon. For more than 20 years he's been mending bones and rebuilding the lives of patients like 12-year-old [Ekelart]. On his surgery list, the victims of congenital defects, car accidents, and landmines. Certainly, no elephants.

Dr. Therdchai J:

When I saw from television that they going to amputate the elephant foot ... They said they're going to amputate the leg ... so I think, "Maybe I can help her because we have all the facilities, the equipment, and the personnel." So I went there and talked with the veterinarians.

Speaker 1:

But when Therdchai first called on his new patient he found complications he wasn't used to back at the clinic; complications that were the result of Motala's abused past.

Dr. Therdchai J:

When I first saw her two months ago, she was in bad condition. She eat little, she is dehydrated, her liver was not good because she was stimulated with like an amphetamine so that she can-

Speaker 1:

For logging.

Dr. Therdchai J:

For, pardon?

Speaker 1:

For logging.

Dr. Therdchai J:

Yes, that's right.

Speaker 1:

With no time to waste, the surgical team first insisted on human standard sterilisation. Well, as close as they could in an open-air elephant stable. To put her under, they needed enough anaesthetic to knock out 70 humans, and once that took effect, a commandeered crane to move Motala into position.

With each phase of the procedure, there came major decisions. The assisting vets wanted to amputate at the knee, but the orthopaedic surgeon's experience told him that by cutting away the shattered foot they could keep everything above Motala's ankle, vastly improving her chances of long-term survival.

Dr. Therdchai J:

Her ankle is around here. This is her foot. This is her leg. Before that the skin take, you see, it go right, you know, hit the ground.

Speaker 1:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. Therdchai J:

So we suture it this way, and we want this skin to cover the end of the wound.

Speaker 1:

The three-hour operation was considered a success.

Dr. Therdchai J:

She just tried to take her legs away because she afraid of pain, and if she cannot take it away then she's cry. As you can-

Speaker 1:

So she's a good-natured-

Dr. Therdchai J:

Very good elephant.

Speaker 1:

Good patient.

Dr. Therdchai J:

Good patient. Yes, good patient.

Speaker 1:

But it was only the beginning of the battle. With the leg saved, now to build a new foot.

Dr. Therdchai J:

Okay. First, this must be fit to the stump first of all, so this can help to distribute the weight of the body of the elephant. [crosstalk].

Speaker 1:

It's a daunting challenge, even for Thailand's top prosthetic specialist. Dr. Therdchai knows Motala's new foot needed to be strong to take the two of her three tonnes supported by her forelegs, but it needed also to be soft enough to comfortably distribute the weight across a recovering and sensitive stump.

Dr. Therdchai J:

When she put the weight on it should be no pain, because if there is pain, she won't use it.

Speaker 1:

So then she would, eventually, just stop and die.

Dr. Therdchai J:

That's right. If it's painful.

Speaker 1:

But as Motala's surgeon was considering that question of balance, animal welfare activists were considering another.

Peter Davies:

One has to question the amount of money that was spent on that one elephant; which was very dramatic and one has great sympathy for the people who did and why they did it, but that money might have been better spent on maybe a hundred elephants who didn't have such a traumatic wound.

Speaker 1:

You'd have thought perhaps the RSPCA's Peter Davies would be applauding Operation Motala, but it's the question of what the elephant's being saved for that worries the animal rights leader.

Speaker 10:

[foreign language].

Peter Davies:

I remain concerned. The elephant clearly can't put its foot down. If it isn't able to in the long term, then that could cause hip displacement and other sufferings. I think, if it had been the RSPCA's decision at the time, we might well have gone for euthanasia to make sure the animal didn't suffer in the long-term.

Speaker 1:

Treating Thai elephants covers a wide beat. We're with Dr Preecha on a house call deep in the country's Lampang province.

Dr. Preecha P:

[foreign language].

Speaker 1:

He knows better than most how much money is needed to take care of the elephants. He knows he doesn't have it, and that the problem of care will only get worse. Thailand's elephants are increasingly unemployed.

Speaker 11:

[foreign language].

Speaker 1:

Among these bulls are man killers. The strength and aggression that once made these mighty beasts so much in demand is unwanted in the modern world of tourist rides and painting.

Here there's little room for the niceties of the tourist shows; brute force and fear are used to tether a male so he can be treated for parasites.

They're being abandoned in greater numbers by owners who can no longer afford to keep them properly.

Dr. Preecha P:

They cannot stop because sickness is coming every day, every day. More, and more, and more, and more. Everything is changing, but I don't know what is the best thing for the elephant. Extinct near, coming near.

Speaker 1:

Extinct coming near?

Dr. Preecha P:

Yes, because I have for working with this more than 20 years, that I know that hopeless for the elephant. No.

Speaker 1:

The fight to save Motala would have been a brave move in any country. If it works it may prove to be more than a public relations exercise, but a turning point in the treatment of elephants. If it fails, Motala could be condemned to years of slow deterioration and a painful arthritic death. Who, then, will step forward to save the next dying elephant to emerge from the jungle?