The Forest Industry Organisation (FIO) is planning five facilities in the South to shelter and treat domesticated elephants, which have been ill in large numbers due to hard labour and poor care by mahouts and keepers.
Five such facilities, to be operated by the FIO-regulated Thai Elephant Conservation Centre (TECC), will be built in Krabi province where 120 elephants work in the logging and tourism industries, out of a total of around 800 animals based in the entire southern region.
The five centres, each on a 100-rai plot, will be located in FIO-owned properties in Ao Luk, Nua Khlong, Phru Dinna, Tong-Bang Chan and Wang Wiset areas. So far, a Bt8.9 million budget has been approved to build one of them.
The FIO will soon obtain royal patronage from Her Majesty the Queen to support this elephant shelter project, permanent secretary Saksit Treedej said yesterday.
Her Majesty has sponsored care of an elephant named Somwang who had been injured by sunburn and overwork in Trang's Huai Yod district. It has been treated and released in May to its home area. HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn will also give a pair of mother-and-child elephants, presented to her by businesspeople, to the TECC.
There is now only one treatment centre for sick elephants across the country, located in Lampang province in the North, and the FIO hopes the five new centres to be built in Krabi will make treatment of local elephants cheaper and more convenient.
The FIO is also tasked with custody of elephants seized in illegal logging operations. The state-enterprise agency cared for and treated three young elephants seized in anti-logging raids last year.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, there are around 3,000 domesticated elephants across the country, as well as another 1,990 wild elephants in an official estimate in 1991. The number dropped to 1,700 in a 1997 estimate.