Tree planting efforts continue at the park

In the past few months Elephant Nature Park has planted over 5,000 new trees. Special thanks to Antoinette van de Water of Bring the Elephants Home for helping with sponsorship.

We are still in the middle of Thailand's monsoon but this hasn’t stopped us forging ahead with our nature restoration plans. We decided that it would be good to get the locals school children involved so that they could learn about the importance of keeping the mountainsides forested. It is, after all, where they reside. Two local schools were contacted in relation to  this tree planting project, early September, 60 students from Gud Chang School (located in a nearby village) came to help. They planted over 4,500 trees total in just 5 hours time. We were also assisted by members of FORRU (Forest Restoration Research Unit) of Chiang Mai University, who helped teach the school children how to plant the young trees correctly. They kindly gave a short lecture on reforestation and the importance of forests. The group worked in the morning, had lunch at the park, and then had an afternoon session of planting as well. Also helping out were some of our mahouts, gardeners, massage ladies and volunteers. A volunteer from a Singapore group filmed the event.  

For the second tree planting event, 40 children from Mae Taeng School came to participate. They could have chosen to go on another field trip but they chose to come to Elephant Nature Park to help plant trees. The students enjoyed elephant bathing before going to the planting site on our land directly across from the park’s main area. As the project was so well organized in advance, they finished the planting the 500 trees in just one hour. They then helped apply fertilizer on both planting fields.  Due to our healthy soil, the fertilizer and the rain, the trees are growing very fast.

This wonderful tree planting project is just another example of one of the many community outreach projects that Elephant Nature Park conducts in order to create awareness for Thai elephants, to conserve their habitat and protect nature.

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Newsletters Past, Present, and Future

Readers and lovers of our Park eles, rest assured if we don't mention an elephant in every newsletter it doesn’t mean that something unforeseen has happened to that elephant. Some periods of time are not as newsworthy as others for all of our elephants. But this just leaves readers with more to look forward to in the next newsletter.

English for Mahouts

Our foundation friend from the USA coordinated and brought together all that was needed to make start the English language classes four our elephant careers a success. Lynn Savage developed the program. Lynn, who has a masters degree in teaching English as a second language, has developed ESL classes, focusing in Asia. She has worked with the Karen and Karenni teaching in refugee camps along the Thai border. Lynn donated her services in helping develop the special ENP program to help mahouts who are interested in learning English so that they can better communicate with the English speaking visitors at the park. The program will start with a 6 week pilot course, to see if the establish interest. Classes are 4 nights a week. The idea is to empower the mahouts to make them feel more confident with learning a second language and with their work in general. The first week of classes is over, and seemed to be an overwhelming success. The mahouts were very excited to have their own special English class. Everybody loved Lynn, who designed the course and taught the first week to give an example of her ESL teaching style. All were sad she couldn’t stay longer. The mahouts were split into 3 classes according to comprehension skills, basic English 1 and 2 and advanced English. Four mahouts with the most advanced English skills were chosen as teachers aides to assist and translate for the first 2 classes. It was nice to see how confident they were and not shy to explain something. it was also nice to see how hungry for knowledge the students are. They were not shy to ask for help from the aides, or to say they don't understand something so they can get it right. This pilot class will run for 6 weeks and after it is finished it will be decided based on attendance and interest levels whether the classes will continue. Tour different companies donated the supplies needed to equip the teacher and mahouts with all that was necessary for them to have a good teaching/learning experience. A variety of things from pens, notebooks, umbrellas, backpacks, picture dictionaries and even ipods were donated. Some things will be used as bonus incentive gifts for good attendance, where other things will be used to aid in listening and repeating skills, such as the ipods. We greatly appreciate the generousity of those who made these donations, and to all of you, thank you very much. Oxford University press donated 40 copies of the Oxford picture dictionary (in exchange for Lynn writing a review for their newest edition of their picture dictionary!), EMC gave backpacks, grey notebooks with pens and the ipods, VARIAN donated the black steno pads, ball point pens and umbrellas, and Synplicity gave the red journals, pen flashlights, t-shirts and button up long sleeve cotton shirts. Hopefully this program will be a great success and continue on into the future.