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Lek Chailert: Rescuer of endangered Asian elephants
When 57-year-old Lek was 16-years-old, she visited a Thailand logging camp and saw elephants being beaten and forced to work. It sickened her.
Later she saw how elephants are trained to entertain people, starting with babies being beaten and tortured and isolated from their pack, their spirits crushed.
Lek became determined to rescue elephants, and her results are remarkable.
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In Thailand in 1996, Lek started the Elephant Nature Park, a sanctuary where elephants live in nature, free of torture and abuse.
She hired ex-elephant handlers from the tourist and logging industries to care for them. And she added other species to join the elephants.
To pay for this, Lek has an unusual business model. She bases it on tourists paying to see the elephants and even helping to care for them.
Fearful of her actions hurting the traditional tourist industry, the Thai government and elephant dependent businesses were highly critical of her.
But Lek’s business model works extremely well as thousands of tourists arrive at the Elephant Nature Park.
Today, there are two more elephant parks in Thailand, one in Cambodia and one in India. They are coordinated by Lek’s Save The Elephant Foundation.
Those parks are changing tourism industry elephant practices and setting an excellent example of love triumphing over cruelty.
To see Lek in action in a compelling 4-minute, 27-second video, click here.
Editor's Note:
National Geographic has a powerful story, describing the prior circumstances of some of Lek’s rescued elephants. Click here.
To learn more about Lek’s Save The Elephant Foundation, click here. To visit Lek’s Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/lek.chailert.
In the next KazanToday:
A man who made a charitable act of historic proportions.
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