I spent the afternoon travelling to the Wildlife SOS rehabilitation centre for Elephants (and Black bears).
This particular centre started in 2010 to rescue elephants living in poor and barbaric conditions.
They also have rescue centres for India’s Black bears.
The ‘dancing bear’ is an historical tradition of the nomadic (‘gypsy’) cultures of India.
Tourism then fed this tradition and this organisation is now changing the outcomes for these rescue animals.
They use a holistic approach and now there are 4 bear sanctuary’s in India and 3000 bears who have been rescued or rehabilitated.
Local people lose their jobs when this practice stops so the government started encouraging locals to surrender their bears and elephants to the rescue centres.
The captive owners are then paid to release their animals and sign an agreement to not use these practices again. They are then offered retraining and many become the rescue workers.
Wildlife SOS also have a children’s program to educate future generations to change these practices permanently.
After 400 years in 2009 the dancing bear tradition ceased in India.
The elephant handling tradition is 5000 years old. Elephants were used for wars and building and then for circuses and traditional ceremonies.
Elephants are the largest animals in the world on land and the practices to control them were and are barbaric.
2,450 elephants are still in captivity in India. There are now two rescue centres in India for elephants.
The calm animals we saw in the circuses of childhood are not in their natural habitat and behaviour and are trained and conditioned out of the behaviour they would have in the wild.
Wildlife SOS are these animals only hope when they are hurt and injured. (I’m sparing you those details).
There are new laws where some animals can be used for commercial purposes under certain conditions but Wildlife SOS is the rescue agency.
They receive no government funding and totally reliant on donations.
It was an amazing afternoon up close with these extraordinary creatures as these incredible group of people work so hard to rehabilitate these damaged elephants.
I promised Robin the Wildlife SOS cultural educator that I would urge you all to check them out and spread the message online.
They are on Facebook at Wildlife SOS.
For man cannot give wild animals freedom they can only take it away.’
Jacques Cousteau #lovestotravel
