Koh Samui elephant park opens two weeks after British tourist trampled to death
Less than two weeks after a British tourist was trampled to death by an elephant it's business as usual for all but one of the abused animals at Koh Samui's Island Safari wildlife park. Words and pictures by Simon Parry.
It's the last Saturday of the Lunar New Year holiday week in Koh Samui, Thailand, and excited Chinese tourists are lining up in the humid morning sunshine to climb onto a wooden platform and see the world from the back of an elephant.
Half a dozen tired-looking animals, with bench seats roped to their backs and led by mahouts (handlers) armed with bull-hooks, carry the holidaymakers on a 20-minute ride up the rutted tracks of a hillside some 2km from a string of resorts overlooking the Gulf of Thailand. As the elephants plod wearily, with couples and families snapping pictures from their backs, it seems a harmless and even sedentary way to spend a day away from the beach.
What the majority of visitors at the busy Island Safari wildlife park - many of whom booked their treks before leaving home as part of a package - do not realise, however, is that the rides have just restarted after a 13-day halt following the death of a Western tourist, who was gored and trampled to death. The elephant that killed 36-year-old Gareth Crowe and injured his teenage stepdaughter is shackled to a tree in full view of holidaymakers, just a few metres from the route on which the tourists are being taken.
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The elephant - 13-year-old Golf - rocks his head back and forth in what a leading wildlife campaigner says is a sign of "deep psychological disturbance", after having been isolated and tied up for nearly a fortnight. Park employees tell tourists he is sick and recovering from an injury, and that the park was closed for renovations.
The future for Golf is not clear; it is feared he will be quietly moved to another wildlife park and put back to work in a highly lucrative business in which an elephant can change hands for between US$40,000 and US$60,000.