Rescue of more than 100 jumbos from flooded sanctuary in Chiang Mai accomplished

More than 100 elephants have been safely evacuated over Friday and Saturday from the flooded Elephant and Environment Foundation, in Mae Taeng district of Chiang Mai province, according to the Elephant Conservation Centre in Lampang province.

In a Facebook post yesterday, the Elephant Conservation Centre said that they received a call for help from the foundation on Friday morning and immediately sent a team to assist.

All road access to the foundation was flooded by overflows from the Taeng River and the currents were strong. Communication by cell-phone was cut off and only radios were working.

The rescue team had to wait for the arrival of boats, from an emergency unit in Kalasin province, before they could reach the foundation, where about 100 elephants and several hundred dogs, cats and rabbits, many of them sick or disabled, were waiting to be evacuated.

Citing records from the National Elephant Institute, there were over 500 elephants in 49 shelters in Mae Taeng district, including about 100 at the Elephant and Environment Foundation. Most elephants from the other shelters had already been moved to higher ground, but the owner of the foundation was still struggling to evacuate several hundred animals.

The centre admits that evacuating about 100 elephants is a difficult and risky task for both the animals and people doing it, particularly when the elephants are not trained.

For the elephants which were trained, the centre said that the mahouts were assigned to guide the animals to safety, adding that sedatives were considered for the untrained elephants, but the idea was dropped because the sedatives, which are muscle relaxants, could cause the elephants to lower their trunks into the water, putting them in danger.

A rope was tied to mark the route along which the untrained elephants were guided by rescuers to safety on higher ground. The rescue mission was completed at about 7.30pm on Saturday.

Two elephants had drowned when they were washed away by the strong currents before the arrival of the rescue team.