I have to confess that this news from back on January 7 disturbs me.  It has certainly created a furor in the conservation world.

The temple — located in Maha Sarakham — had acquired a total of 10 elephants, including two each from Phuket, Phang Nga, and Mae Hong Son.  It may also have bought another pair two months ago from Bang Bon village in Surin’s Tha Tum district — “One of them was a fierce 13-year-old beast with tusks.”

The three elephants that were butchered earned the temple Bt2 million ($85,619) through the sale of their meat, skulls, and tusks.

You can read the story here: Thai temple butchers carcasses of 3 elephants, sold their meat.

According to the site Change.org, the seven elephants remaining at the temple show signs of severe malnutrition and are at risk of dying.

How are Buddhist monks able to neglect these magnificent animals to this degree, if this is true? And further, how are these compassionate pacifists able to kill three elephants in their care — I thought there was some sort of Buddhist compunction very much against any sort of killing?

Or did they just butcher animals that they had neglectfully allowed to die of malnutrition?

I do not like the sound of this at all.

I never realized that captive elephants had no more rights under Thai law than did cattle — such elephants are deemed nothing more than livestock or draught animals; and that even though there is an international ban against the marketing of ivory, it is legal to sell the parts of captive elephants.

Who can tell the difference between captive and wild elephant ivory?

Please read the Change.org article Thai Temple Butchers Three Elephants, Starves Several More, and the links appearing within the article that lead to other related articles.

Baby Elephant playing on the beach

Have been trying to upload this for 3 months think it finally worked – so cute Baby Elephants came to play on the beach in Phuket twice a day

Related articles

• Calls for elephants to be banned in New Delhi (telegraph.co.uk)
• Thai Elephants Return Home From Concrete Jungles (npr.org)
• Elephant’s memory (cateof.wordpress.com)
• Central Highlands elephants face extinction (lookatvietnam.com)

Tags: Elephant, Environment, Law of Thailand, Maha Sarakham, Maha Sarakham Province, Phuket, Phuket Province, thailand

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 15th, 2011 at 4:33 pm and is filed under Buddhism/Temples, General interest, Isaan in general, People and Places. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.