Conservationist wins Polish award for work with elephants

A Poland-based foundation has given an award to a Thai activist who founded a nursery for disabled or injured elephants in Chiang Mai, the Thai embassy in Warsaw said yesterday.

In its citation for granting the Good Deed Award to Saengduen Chailert, Fundacji Zacny Uczynek said the Elephant Nature Park in Mae Taeng district had nurtured sick and wounded elephants while relying on those in good health to serve local tourism in an ecological and conservationist manner.

No elephants are used to carry visitors like most tourist businesses at the 200-rai park, where 30 tuskers, including babies, are cared for. Saengduen plans to set up a similar park in Surin's Tha Toom district.

Saengduen has won many accolades including an Earth Award by Time in 2006, after being hailed a Hero of Asia by the magazine a year earlier. In 2001, the Ford Foundation named her a Hero of the Planet. Her Elephant Nature Park has also been filmed by the BBC, National Geographic, Discovery Channel and Animal Planet.

Born in 1962 in Chiang Mai, Saengduen graduated from the Liberal Arts Faculty at Chiang Mai University before beginning a career in tourism. She later learnt about cruelty suffered by elephants at human hands and dedicated herself to helping those wounded or sick, and setting up the Nature Park.

Fundacji Zacny Uczynek was founded in 2005 to encourage Good Samaritans while promoting other values in addition to education, good governance, democracy, unity and human rights.

Two other recipients of the Good Deed Award this year are Professor Shevah Weiss, an Israeli political scientist, and Adam Wajrak, a journalist with Gazeta Wyborcza, who became an environmentalist.

Weiss, a Holocaust survivor who, migrated to Palestine in 1947, became a professor at the University of Haifa. In 2000 he was made president of the Yad Vashem Council. From 2001 to 2003, he served as the Israeli ambassador to Poland.