Elephant Lockdown
A Thai elephant story
Documentary by Nicolas Axelrod
Coded Transcript & Music queue
00.00.00.00
– Start
00.00.00.18
– Sub: Elephant... elephant...
elephant.
00.00.03.15
– Sub: Sing the elephant song.
00.00.04.10
– Title: An uncertain walk
A Thai elephant story
00.00.07.08
– Sub: Have you ever seen an
elephant? (TITLE FADE)
00.00.08.11
– Title: END TITLE
00.00.10.04
– Sub: The elephant is quite big.
00.00.12.00
– Sub: It has a long nose called
trunk.
00.00.14.02
– Sub: With teeth under the nose
called tusks.
00.00.14.12
– MUSIC Queue : Failure Over Regret – Borrtex (Artlist)
00.00.16.22
– Sub : It
has ears, eyes, and long tail.
00.00.21.00
– Sub: Wandee,
say hi to Wandee.
00.00.28.03
– Title: The elephant is the official
national animal
of Thailand and considered a social icon.
00.00.32.04
– Title: END TITLE
00.00.34.19
– Title: Thailand is home to some 3800
captive elephants.
00.00.38.02
– Title: END TITLE
00.00.39.22
– Sub: My grandfather had elephants.
00.00.43.22
– Sub: It's famous in this area, Ta Klang, Baan Nong Bua and Tatit.
00.00.50.22
– Sub: Even when my grandchildren are
married,
they will still live around here.
00.00.55.20
– Sub: So, the elephants are also
transferred from generation to generation.
00.01.03.21
– Title: Salarat
Salangam
Tatit Homestay
Ban Tatit,
Surin
00.01.06.15
– Title: END TITLE
00.01.06.15
– Sub: Every day, I'll take care of my
elephants at home.
00.01.10.22
– Sub: Before Covid-19, we got
tourists from all over the world.
00.01.19.11
– Sub: But with the pandemic, there
are no tourists at all.
00.01.30.24
– Sub: In the past, elephants were
considered to be gods.
00.01.31.14
– Title: Samuhaan
Bpanyaataroh
Wat Pa-A-Jieng
Ban Ta Klang,
Surin
00.01.24.17
– Title: END TITLE
00.01.35.03
– Sub: The word Surin,
means “city built by gods.”
00.01.37.18
– Sub: And the elephant is the god.
00.01.39.18
– Sub: That’s why elephants are important.
00.01.43.00
– MUSIC End : Failure Over Regret – Borrtex (Artlist)
00.01.43.07
– Sub: When elephants die.
00.01.44.22
– Sub: We have a special place for
the bodies.
00.01.48.11
– Sub: It’s called ‘the elephant
grave yard’.
00.01.52.22
– Sub: We see the elephants in two
different perspectives.
00.01.55.20
– Sub: First, as a working elephant.
00.01.57.22
– Sub: In the past for logging.
00.02.00.07
– Sub: Building houses, bridges, and
temples.
00.02.06.15
– Sub: Now we use elephants for
tourism.
00.02.12.01
– Sub: Here we use elephants for
Buddhism.
00.02.18.16
– Sub: They help collect alms, and
they join in Buddhist ceremonies.
00.02.35.20
– Sub: Thailand has been locked down
for three months already.
00.02.41.04
– Sub: And we have no visitors, which
is the only source
of our income and funding.
00.02.47.14
– Sub: There are more than 2000
elephants in this country.
00.02.52.09
– Sub: Who actually subsidised
financially, supported financially by tourism.
00.02.58.18
– Title: Theerapat Trungprakan
Patara Elephant Farm
Chiang Mai
00.03.02.16
– Title: END TITLE
00.03.05.03
– Sub: None of the elephant people
here are prepared
to face the zero
income situation.
00.03.12.03
– Sub: But once it gets to this
stage, we still cannot think of any alternative.
00.03.17.18
– Sub: That we can subsidise and
financially support for the elephant care.
00.03.22.22
– MUSIC Queue : Black Out – Borrtex
(Artlist)
00.03.36.12
– Sub: So yeah, technically Friday
was our last day.
00.03.38.18
– Sub: We paid off all the staff,
they all got their annual leave,
and their last wages.
00.03.38.18
– Title: Jack Highwood
Elephant Valley Thailand
Chiang Rai
00.03.43.24
– Title: END TITLE
00.03.46.15
– Sub: And we gave them some
compensation
because the company is closing.
00.03.44.22
– Sub: We had lots of people working
here in this tiny office,
for quite a while.
00.03.59.05
– MUSIC End : Black Out – Borrtex
(Artlist)
00.04.00.07
– Sub: This is where we sat and
planned everything.
00.04.04.01 – Sub: It is sort of frozen in time, this is
everything that we had to do, everything we were doing, everything we did.
00.04.12.09 – Sub: That is all irrelevant now with “Safari”,
and also with here.
00.04.15.18 – Sub: I don’t know, for me it strikes me how
many businesses
are going through the same thing.
00.04.19.05 – Sub: I think a lot of places, just a couple of
months ago went:
“right, go away, we will find you when we open
again.”
00.04.25.07
– Sub: And just laid off people
without doing anything.
00.04.29.15
– Sub: They just turned off the
switch.
00.04.33.01 – Sub: I think that is certainly true with
elephant camps, a lot of camps are just locations where you can bring your
elephant.
00.04.42.17 – Sub: And either you look after it yourself or
someone else looks after it, and if you get tourists you get paid, and if not not.
00.05.00.24 – Sub: When COVID is gone, and the economy is
good.
00.05.04.08 – Sub: What should we do next, should the
elephants go back?
00.05.08.02 – Sub: We will have to check when the elephant
camps will re-open.
00.05.14.12 – Sub: But what if they don’t re-open?
00.05.15.21 – Sub: If they don’t, we’ll just have to stay
home
and take care of our elephants at home.
00.05.20.08 – Sub: We have nothing.
00.05.21.17 – Sub: We can’t just go there without income.
00.05.23.09 – Sub: Even if we go, we won’t get a salary.
00.05.29.11 – Sub: At least at home we can still do some
farming.
00.05.35.09 – Sub: It is better to just stay home.
00.05.38.22 – Sub: In case there are tourists visiting here,
we can welcome them.
00.05.45.10 – Sub: It would be nice if the government can help
the jobless elephants.
00.05.50.04 – Sub: Because there are not only these two who
lost their jobs.
00.05.54.07 – Sub: There are still many more.
00.05.58.13 – Sub: How many?
00.05.59.11 – Sub: Probably about 60, all jobless.
00.06.04.21 – Sub: Some still need to return home, from
Pattaya, Phuket...
00.06.11.17 – Sub: Mostly from Pattaya, Phuket.
00.06.14.23 – Sub: They plan to take the elephants from
Samui.
00.06.19.17 – Sub: But they are not back yet.
00.06.25.06 – Sub: We are waiting for the truck.
00.06.33.19 – Sub: My midlife crisis, charcoal making,
something to do.
00.06.37.15 – Sub: Distract me from the horrors of 2020.
00.06.45.12 – Sub: Let’s go see.
00.06.53.18 – Sub: But yeah, at the end of the day, what we
are doing here, is basically we are doing the responsible thing.
00.06.58.13 – Sub: We could have not closed down.
00.07.02.05 – Sub: And completely gambled on tourist coming
back in one month.
00.07.09.13 – Sub: But I just don't think that's going to
happen.
00.07.12.05 – Sub: Everyone in America and England lost their
job or maybe they've been furloughed at a fraction of their wages.
00.07.17.17 – Sub: And, you know, people didn't have money to
spend anyway,
let alone before this happened.
00.07.18.22
– Sub: MUSIC Queue
: Black Out – Borrtex (Artlist)
00.07.22.14 – Sub: And we could have gone online and put up
a fund raiser, a GoFundMe.
00.07.25.21 – Sub: But A, I personally don’t think companies
should do that.
00.07.32.06 – Sub: Because it just takes away from charity.
00.07.36.13 – Sub: One of the reasons I built this place was
to see whether this sanctuary model,
00.07.41.22 – Sub: was viable as a company.
00.07.45.06 – Sub: To invest, to go get investors, and bank
loans and to do something which typically is charitable.
00.07.50.14 – Sub: And to say “Ok, is this viable as a
company.” It's not.
00.07.57.01 – Sub: But most companies are built around like a
growth model.
00.07.59.12 – Sub: And elephants can’t rely on that.
00.08.10.13 – Sub: Well the elephant just realised what is
going on.
00.08.14.09 – Sub: And basically
just like we did with that one,
we just have to keep poking.
00.08.17.07 – Sub: Poke, poke, poke, until it realises that
it has no choice but to get on the truck, and that is what we are doing today.
00.08.24.01 – Sub: If you don’t want to do this, you don’t
want to use violence.
00.08.27.11 – Sub: Which is at the core of say, the animal
rights movement.
00.08.30.15 – Sub: Then you have got to put up a barrier.
00.08.35.18 – Sub: And then you’ve got an elephant inside an
enclosure, you have
no direct contact, you have protective contact,
00.08.39.10 – Sub: There is always a barrier between you and
the elephant, no violence is required, but then you’ve got a zoo.
00.08.44.03 – Sub: And then you’ve got some places, they are
like “oh yeah no,
we don’t need chains, don’t have hooks.”
00.08.48.10 – Sub: I say well “how do you handle the
elephant?”
00.08.48.22
– MUSIC End : Black Out – Borrtex
(Artlist)
00.08.48.22
– MUSIC Queue : Failure Over Regret – Borrtex (Artlist)
00.08.49.19 – Sub: They say “Oh we just talk to them.”
00.08.50.24 – Sub: It's like “Ok so you are lying.”
00.09.03.23 – Sub: It is really sad to see, two elephants
that
we put so much work into go like that.
00.09.07.23 – Sub: But it just underlines that point that,
elephants are wild animals,
they should live in the wild.
00.09.13.10 – Sub: And if you want to do anything else with
them it is really difficult
not to do that without a degree of violence.
00.09.18.10 – Sub: And the problem is that in the West.
00.09.20.08 – Sub: The only way you can actually look after
wild animals
without inflicting violence upon them.
00.09.20.12
– MUSIC End : Failure Over Regret – Borrtex (Artlist)
00.09.25.18 – Sub: Is you just put a great big fence and you
stick them inside,
and leave them alone.
00.09.29.16 – Sub: But when you do that, you got a zoo. And
the prevailing feeling
in the West is zoos are bad.
00.09.34.10 – Sub: As soon as you take an elephant out of the
wild it’s catch 22.
00.09.36.20 – Sub: You are damned if you do and you are
damned if you don't.
00.09.38.07 – Sub: If you handle the elephant. It's bad for
the elephant.
00.09.41.20 – Sub: You put it in a zoo, if it's not done
properly,
it’s bad
for the elephant.
00.09.45.15 – Sub: And it's just one of those animals that
really shouldn't
be living in captivity.
00.09.50.08
– MUSIC Queue : Eternity – Borrtex
(Artlist)
00.09.50.09 – Sub: After 16 years working with elephants,
that's really clear to me.
00.10.07.21 – Sub: When the elephant camp had to close,
we brought the elephants back.
00.10.13.13 – Sub: We rented trucks to bring the elephants
from Phuket
back to our Tatit
village.
00.10.21.01 – Sub: It cost us about cost 24,000 Baht
(~800USD) to bring them back.
00.10.30.01 – Sub: When we were at elephant camp in Phuket,
we were paid
40,000 Baht (~1300USD) a month.
00.10.32.02
- MUSIC End : Eternity – Borrtex
(Artlist)
00.10.36.14 – Sub: The mahout and I would share half and
half,
20,000 baht (~650USD) each.
00.10.44.11 – Sub: We're like brother and sister, so we help
each other
taking care of the elephants.
00.10.48.21 – Sub: We shared money from tips.
00.10.51.14
– MUSIC Queue : Black Out – Borrtex
(Artlist)
00.11.14.19 – Sub: We are actually building a temporary
reception station by the road.
00.11.22.23 – Sub: So then drivers,
we are now expecting Thai drivers,
travellers, passengers.
00.11.29.20 – Sub: To see the elephant by the road, stop and
talk to us, and then we are going to offer them some elephant activity.
00.11.36.22 – Sub: So we are trying
to find a way to survive making some small income.
00.11.41.04
– MUSIC End : Black Out – Borrtex
(Artlist)
00.11.41.04
– MUSIC Queue : Failure Over Regret – Borrtex (Artlist)
00.11.43.12 – Sub: Every day, hopefully, from the Thai and
local visitors.
00.11.53.17 – Sub: One of my concerns about the elephant
health and welfare
of
these jobless elephants.
00.12.03.01 – Sub: Is about the boredom.
00.12.06.01 – Sub: Normally we try to encourage the elephant
camps to let the elephant walk at least five to 10 kilometres a day.
00.12.06.01 – Title: Chatchote Thitaram
Center of Elephant and Wildlife Research
Chiang Mai
00.12.10.17
– Title: TITLE END
00.12.13.08 – Sub: So that is when there are no tourists.
00.12.16.00 – Sub: The elephant will walk less and then after
that,
less exercise for a long time.
00.12.20.11 – Sub: Right now, it's has been around six
months.
00.12.24.10 – Sub: So most of the elephants
they tie in the camp, or sometimes tie in the edge of the forest with a chain.
00.12.31.22 – Sub: And some times
there is nothing to do.
00.12.39.20 – TITLE: Jarawee Suphanta
Center of Elephant and Wildlife Research
Chiang Mai
00.12.40.04 – Sub: I think lack of exercise will lead to more
stress.
00.12.48.06 – Sub: The stress index like glucocorticoids,
cortisol
in elephant hormone will increase.
00.12.53.07 – Sub: This is what I assume we will see.
00.12.56.11 – Sub: Some elephants are suffering from bedsores
and don't get the chance to move at all,
00.12.56.13 – MUSIC End : Failure Over Regret – Borrtex (Artlist)
00.13.04.15 – Sub: The lactase in muscle might be increasing.
00.13.08.22 – Sub: I talk to the mahouts about stress levels
in elephants for the research project that I'm working on.
00.13.09.05 – Sub: The research is to show how COVID has
affected elephants, as there are no tourists during the pandemic and the
elephants exercise less.
00.13.14.19 – MUSIC End : Black Out – Borrtex (Artlist)
00.13.35.16 – Sub: Since I was born, I've never experienced a
pandemic and problems like this before.
00.13.47.05 – Sub: If I had to move the elephants previously,
there were still
jobs at other camps.
00.13.52.10 – Sub: Now all the camps are closed and we have
nowhere to go.
00.13.59.13 – Sub: It’s all closed, so the elephants have to
come home.
00.13.59.13 – MUSIC End : Black Out – Borrtex (Artlist)
00.14.04.14 – Sub: For now, I'll have to live like this, even
I am in so much debt.
00.14.10.16 – Sub: I don't know where to go, I can’t see any
future.
00.14.16.16 – Sub: I don't know of any elephant camps that
are open.
00.14.22.24 – Sub: Even if they are open they have no
visitors,
so they can’t afford to pay us.
00.14.29.05 – Sub: So, for now we have to go find banana
trees, sugarcane
and grass by ourselves.
00.14.48.02 – Sub: The small elephants, we will separate them
from the mother to train.
00.14.51.24 – Sub: We train them but we don’t torture them.
00.14.58.21 – Sub: We use the bananas to get their attention,
when they're hungry, they'll do as we say.
00.15.02.20 – Sub: The small ones are easy to train.
00.15.05.21 – Sub: With bananas and using the hook a little.
00.15.10.22 – Sub: The elephants will remember the commands.
00.15.17.02 – Sub: It is not difficult to train the little
ones.
00.15.23.00 – Sub: We don't torture them like you see in the
news.
00.15.29.24 – Sub: They're like our families, we love them
more than our kids.
00.15.31.06 – MUSIC Queue : Black Out – Borrtex (Artlist)
00.15.35.22 – Title: Weaning, also known as crush or ceremony, is
a two-week training process to break a baby elephant in order to make them
submissive to humans.
00.15.42.05 – Title: TITLE END
00.15.52.00 – Sub: There's a direct correlation between the
activity
you do with the elephant.
00.16.01.15 – Sub: And the amount of violence you have to use
with that elephant
to get it to do that activity.
00.16.08.22 – Sub: You just can’t safely handle an elephant
without it.
00.16.13.01 – MUSIC End : Black Out – Borrtex (Artlist)
00.16.13.02 – Sub: If the elephant doesn’t fear people they
will just kill people.
00.16.18.07 – Sub: So if you start
on one side, you would have, say, an elephant living in the wild requires no
violent control.
00.16.28.12 – Sub: And then every time you step up the level
of control you need with the animal, the more violence is required.
00.16.34.24 – Sub: Because on the whole, elephants are
intelligent.
00.16.39.07 – Sub: And that means you can train it to dance
to disco music in Ayutthaya.
00.16.45.17 – Sub: Or you can train it to walk a tightrope in
a circus outside Bangkok
00.16.53.16 – Sub: or perform in a show in Pattaya or Phuket.
00.16.57.24 – Sub: What I see is the level of violence, on
either side
of the visitors, is quite high.
00.17.02.20 – Sub: So before the
visitor arrives in a minibus, they beat the freaking shit out of the elephant.
00.17.08.01 – Sub: And then they say to the elephant “ah
don't be naughty when the visitors are here.”
00.17.12.21 – Sub: And elephants are like “ok ok ok.” And then it sort of performs a trick.
00.17.16.00 – Sub: The same way it will dance or in a show, it
will lay down perfectly
still in a mud bath and let people wash it.
00.17.16.20 – MUSIC Queue : Black Out – Borrtex (Artlist)
00.17.21.11 – Sub: Or they'll throw water on themselves and
also throw water,
like they're trained to throw water on the guests.
00.17.31.18 – Sub: I would say that the different group of
elephant people from different part of Southeast Asia.
00.17.39.18 – Sub: They have different kind of background.
They have different kinds of, let's say they have different approaches.
00.17.46.24 - Sub: They
have different kinds of background.
00.17.48.10 – Sub: They have different techniques of elephant
training
and elephant communication.
00.17.53.11 – Sub: And they're always advantages and
disadvantages of different approaches and different systems.
00.17.54.22 – MUSIC End : Black Out – Borrtex (Artlist)
00.18.00.23 – Sub: There are elephant training schools
provide by the Thai government.
00.18.13.07 – Sub: Any of the private sector and family and
the villagers they can actually send their elephant.
00.18.20.06 – Sub: But we have to go with the elephant.
00.18.22.14 – Sub: For the two-week session of weaning.
00.18.30.02 – Sub: I think...
00.18.31.07 – Sub: Seeing the footage of an elephant being in
a crush.
00.18.35.04 – MUSIC Queue : Dark Tension – Kyle Preston (Artlist)
00.18.37.00 – Sub: There is not that much footage, because as
soon as the first footage was released.
00.18.40.13 – Sub: The government and a lot of camps, a lot
of people realised, “oh crap we shouldn’t let cameras be around when we do
that.”
00.18.52.09 – Sub: And while the rearing techniques have
changed a little bit.
00.18.56.20 – Sub: Now they have realised you got to get
human contact with that elephant really early on.
00.19.01.16 – Sub: To reduce how much force you need to
handle the elephant.
00.19.07.05 – Sub: You can’t do what people do with
elephants, without breaking
that animal.
00.19.12.12 – Sub: And making that sort of underlying,
intrinsic fear.
00.19.16.14 – Sub: So there's always
a time that the elephants stay with mom
and they have kind of strong bond.
00.19.23.24 – Sub: And you can't just take their baby away
until the right time.
00.19.29.20 – Sub: For example, when the mother is having
another baby, child.
00.19.33.06 – Sub: So that's when mother has kind of less
attention
for the older brother or sister.
00.19.43.15 – Sub: Recently we have found that there was a
shocking kind
of unprecedented movie that went viral with the
elephant training method.
00.19.58.09
– Sub: We have found that the whole
media of one minute movie clips.
00.20.06.03 – Sub: Was actually designed, staged, cut, sound,
edit, computer graphic, especially for the certain purpose.
00.20.18.06 – Sub: Making people, the viewer understand that every part of the baby elephant, that people
can interact with.
00.20.26.00 – Sub: Every part of the elephant that people can
touch.
00.20.29.23 – Sub: Every elephant that are in tourism of
Thailand, in Southeast Asia.
00.20.36.22 – Sub: Has to be trained through that kind of
torture, training method.
00.20.39.21 – MUSIC End : Dark Tension – Kyle Preston (Artlist)
00.20.48.03 – Sub: When Lalameuy
gives birth, take her to do the ceremony.
00.20.53.08 – Sub: Just tie them, don’t put them in the small
cage.
00.20.56.15 – Sub: We will leave her like that and keep
feeding her.
00.21.02.06 – Sub: And after that bring her back to the herd.
00.21.06.07 – Sub: If we don’t start with Lalameuy,
elephant tourism will struggle to come back if there is another video clip of
elephants in a cage.
00.21.13.16 – Sub: The last clip from the foreigner in Surin, they didn’t think that what they are doing is wrong,
00.18.35.04 – MUSIC Queue : Failure Over Regret - Borrtex
(Artlist)
00.21.25.00 – Sub: They trusted the foreigner because he
lived there for two years.
00.21.32.14 – Sub: The idea that an elephant can leave
captivity and successfully go back into the wild.
00.21.37.08 – Sub: Is incredibly threatening to people whose
income relies
on elephants being in captivity.
00.21.45.11 – Sub: Even some of the most famous people in
this country,
00.21.47.02 – Sub: they say: “no, elephants can't live in the
wild.”
00.21.50.05 – Sub: They can, it’s fine.
00.21.51.05 – Sub: You just have to unwind them, de-stress
them.
00.21.55.05 – Sub: Get them used to a more natural routine.
00.21.58.08 – Sub: And then you have to just drop them with
other elephants at the same time into an area.
00.22.05.07 – Sub: And then you are fine.
00.22.07.11 – Sub: Right now, for almost more than 20 years,
we have released
around 108 elephants.
00.22.15.00 – Sub: Captive elephant back to the wild to three
natural area.
00.22.16.04 – MUSIC End : Failure Over Regret - Borrtex
(Artlist)
00.22.20.08 – Sub: And then we got elephants breeding and
also got natural born, natural birth around 40 elephant calves born, naturally
now.
00.22.31.00 – Sub: We can do that one.
00.22.32.20 – Sub: But it's not easy because from our 20
years of work, not every elephant can be released and can survive in the forest.
00.22.41.23 – Sub: Some of them die from the attack each
other.
00.22.45.16 – Sub: Some of them die because of disease or
accident.
00.22.49.03 – Sub: Some can be released and can survive
without any problem
and some can survive and reproduce.
00.22.55.11 – Sub: But one thing, right now from the policy
of Elephant Re-introduction Foundation.
00.23.00.19 – Sub: We don't want to release anymore, because
of less
and less natural habitat.
00.23.05.22 – Sub: And also human
elephant conflict occur more and more.
00.23.09.09 – Sub: So this means if
we release more and more elephants, especially to bring the captive elephant
put into the forest.
00.23.17.17 – Sub: Most of the villagers around the forest.
They will think they will bring the problem from captive elephant.
00.23.15.21 – Sub: And create the new problem to their
places.
00.23.28.24 – Sub: So most of them
always asked:
00.23.32.00 – Sub: “We don't want more elephants in that
area.”
00.23.35.13 – Sub: Don't want to create more problems to the
villagers around the forest.
00.24.01.19 - MUSIC Queue : Darkness – Onyx (Artlist)
00.24.01.19 – Credit: A documentary by
Nicolas Axelrod
00.24.08.02 – Credit: Story supervision by
Abby Seiff
00.24.14.10 – Credit: Research assistance from
David Owen
00.24.20.18 – Credit: Translations by
Nantawan Wangudomsuk
00.24.27.01 – Credit: Additional translations by
Chanadda Khruapradab
00.24.33.09 – Credit: Field assistant
Janjira Lintong
00.24.39.17 – Credit: Editing
Nicolas Axelrod
00.24.46.00 – Credit: Music
Kyle Preston - Dark Tension
Onyx - Darkness
Borrtex - Eternity
Failure over Regret
Black out
Typical Day
00.24.52.08 – Credit: Special Thanks
Audrey Mealia
Jan Schmidt-Burbach
Lamom Axeltong
00.24.58.16 – Credit: Special Thanks
Jack Highwood
Theerapat Trungprakan
Chatchote Thitaram
Salarat Salangam
00.25.04.24 – Credit: Stock Footage
avgeeks / Pond5
sutiporn / Pond5
anokato / Pond5
Crush Footage
World Animal Protection
00.24.39.17 – Credit: Editing
Nicolas Axelrod
00.25.08.00
– Credit: © Ruom Collective
00.25.11.24
- End