In January 2013, Songkraan, a 3 year old male elephant calf died from ingesting pesticides left out by a local farmer.  Songkraan was a model for creating semi-wild herds of elephants in Thailand as he was born in the forest rather than in captivity like most domestic elephants today.  

As a result of his death we are working to provide more education, capacity building and support for the village so incidents like this do not occur again.

Focus for funding is initially on mahout capacity building to provide them more education and training on elephant first aid and care and transport elephants when emergencies do arise.  As much of their training is based on handing down traditions generation to generation we also want to allow them access to modern solutions to issue that arise.  We are also looking at setting up a basic clinic in the village where elephants can be treated as needed.  A spot has been picked out but funding is still needed for this.  We are also looking at options for alternatives to chemical pesticides and the community is looking at ways to better manage disposal and storage of the pesticides in the short term.