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In November 2005, a team from Elephant Nature Park spotted Dok Ngern
at the elephant festival in Surin. She was bleeding and looked very sad.
Dok Ngern was displaying the agitated swaying motions typical of
traumatized captive elephants. When Lek approached her in an attempt to
help, she would not accept food. Scars on her forehead are evidence of
physical abuse, yet this sort of behaviour shows the signs of deeper
emotional and psychological scaring. Antoinette van de Water was also
present at the festival. She resolved to buy Dok Ngern as part of Bring
the Elephant HOME, a project which involved bringing two elephants
across Thailand to Elephant Nature Park, while educating people about
their plight along the way. This project also involved the purchase of a
banana plantation, to provide for the elephants’ sustainable future. So
Dok Ngern, along with an older elephant Sri Nuan, Antoinette’s team, and
two mahouts from ENP, began their journey towards freedom at the end of
2005. Upon Dok Ngern’s arrival at the park in January 2006, she was
greeted with fanfare and celebration.
Settling in to the herd
Dok Ngern quickly joined a new family group consisting of Sri Nuan,
Malai Tong, Mae Tok Koh, and Mae Tok Koh’s son Pupia, to whom she has
become a fiercely protective older sister. She now has a future of
freedom ahead in which she can forget the horrors she endured in the
first few years of her life.
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