Editor’s note. Joseph Connelly traveled to Northern Thailand (pre-COVID) to learn about the Save Elephant Foundation and its founder, Lek Chailert. He spent three days at Elephant Nature Park (ENP) and its subsidiaries, including a day-long Elephants Highland mountain trek to Lek’s home forest village. What follows is the result of an exclusive interview recorded while sitting around an outdoor table at ENP with Lek, her husband Darrick Thompson, a few ENP staff, dozens of free-roaming dogs, and a blind inquisitive elephant a few feet away. Lek’s direct quotes have largely been left “as is” so that the reader hears her voice, not the author’s.

Mother Teresa Meets Jane Goodall

“Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.” —Albert Einstein

Is it possible that one person can empower women, build a vibrant economic community, employee refugees and villagers, build schools, repeatedly stand up to her family’s criticisms, win international recognition, and start the conversation to change her country’s long-standing tradition away from the abuse of its national symbol? Meet Superhero Lek Chailert, the founder of Thailand’s Save Elephant Foundation, who, along with everything else, somehow finds time to provide sanctuary 
to thousands of animals … including elephants.

Humble Beginnings
The tribal village of Baan Lao, Thailand, is quite remote, several hours by long and winding one-lane road from charming Chiang Mai, the country’s laid-back “second city.” Where Chiang Mai is renowned for Buddhist temples and yoga and NGOs, Baan Lao is a dot (if you can find it) on the map. Even local people would call it “lek,” the Thai world for “small.”

When Saengduean Chailert was born in Baan Lao in 1961, the village had no running water or electricity. One of five daughters in a large family, her mother was herself the daughter of the village Shaman, the tribal healer. It was here Chailert’s foundation for a lifetime of animal stewardship and activism was born.

“My grandfather rescued animals and released them back into the jungle,” she says. “We rescued many animals and my mother allowed me to connect with them, especially chickens and cows. I raise them when I was very young. In my life, I am fortunate that all these kind of animals come in my path.”

Chailert’s good fortune has benefited countless animals in the six decades since. Today, she is affectionately known as Lek, the founder of The Save Elephant Foundation and the movement to free these gentle giants from lives of forced labor and monotonous tourist rides. While “Lek” in stature, Chailert is a giant among 
activists.

Early Lessons
Baan Lao only had a temple school, and Lek’s 
mother wanted her daughter to have a quality education. “Everybody who wanted to go to school must walk to the other town, which is about 14 kilometers [away]. My mother choose me [to go to that school], and then we walk as a group. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Three days in a week we have to walk.

“Later, my mother was thinking that when we have a heavy rain, that the water would take us [away].” Lek’s mother sought out a home in the village where the children could stay during the school week. She found a childless couple willing to board the tribal children.

“I was only 10 years old when I arrive. All of us from my tribe stay in that house … seven children. I’m the youngest. And all man, except me—only woman.”

The villagers are expected to help with chores. The man of the house gathers the seven children.

[Impersonations are another of Lek’s endless talents. In an older male’s voice]: “Sit down, OK, all of you come here, nothing free in the world. You have to trade work because your parent doesn’t have money to pay.” The man listed the chores the children are expected to perform. “We have a job: Washing. Clean the dish. Clean the house. Look after the pig.”

Lek’s hand shot up quickly. But she didn’t ask how many. “Twelve pig I have to look after,” she beams.

She’s the pigs’ primary caregiver. “They know the time. Like, at 4:30 I come home from school and when they see me, they scream for food.” [Lek squeals like a pig.] I give food to them and after that I clean the pen.” The dozen piglets quickly become her sanctuary.

“At the school I get bullied by a lot of boy, you know. They open my skirt … [Lek pauses briefly]. I have no shoes [on] and they stand on my feet. They said, ‘We heard that you are the forest people.’ We were forest people. We had tough feet and could walk barefoot. We did have shoes but they were slippery in the rainy season. So we walked barefoot.”

There was more bullying. “And my hair, you know, my hair like a long hair. Sometimes they cut my hair. So they’re bullying me quite a lot. And when I talk to the teachers they laugh at me. And when they laugh at me, 
I have no one to talk to. So I talk to the pig.”

The piglets quickly bonded with Lek as well. “They come and put their chins on me [she touches her thigh] and all of them sleep in a pack. Twelve of them all around and I read [them] the book. I talk to them and 
the neighbor think I’m crazy. But I loved them. I give all names; 12 names. I call them ‘the honest company.’ [Lek wells up.] Sometimes I would cry, right? They would come and put their nose on me, like, ‘Don’t cry.’ I start to see … they are so intelligent. They are so beautiful. 
I connect with them when I’m young.”

Others at the boarding house are responsible for preparing meals. Lek notices meat in the pot and refuses to eat it. “I didn’t eat. I go and pick. Sometimes I boil [my own] vegetables. Then I asked the man in the kitchen, ‘Can I help you in the kitchen because I want to cook?’” She extends this to the pigs, who she realizes are fed trash. “I didn’t want that. I wanted the pig to eat good quality, not the waste food. I go to the kitchen and I take the bone out. I don’t want to hurt them. I feel they are my family.”

For nearly two years, Lek cares for the piglets. “I raised them from this little [she holds her hands about 12-inches apart]. And then they grow up.” Before long they’ve grown so big that instead of crawling over her, she can hide under them.

One day while at school she hears screaming. She says to herself, “Hey, this is not the time for dinner yet.” She runs from her classroom and sees men grabbing the pigs. “Four, five men start to grab the pigs and tie their legs and throw them in the truck. When the pigs see me they are still screaming. I went up to the men and I said, ‘Where are you taking my pig?’

“It’s not your pig! That is someone’s pig.”

“That’s my pig!”

Lek starts to climb onto the truck; the men try to pull her down. “I go up and I pat them on the belly. You know it doesn’t matter in that situation… They know I’m there. They feel safe—all of them quiet right away. And when they quiet, the man say, ‘Oh, let the girl sit there.’ They pick up another one and he’s screaming.

When he’s put in truck, he stops. They all lie down and 
I pet them and my tears start to come down and I cry, ‘Where are you taking my pig? Where are you going to take my pig?’ I beg them ‘Please, please don’t take my pig. They are my family. They are my sister. They are my brother. Please don’t take my pig!’ They don’t listen to me, you know? I still cry [today] because [of] that experience.

“And you know what? They are quiet. They are screaming. They see me. Quiet. Screaming. See me. 
Quiet. I pet them. I talk to them. I lullaby them. I sing a song for them. I say everything will be OK.”

When the workers finish loading the truck, they remove Lek. The pigs react immediately. “They screeeaaam [Lek does another spot-on animal impersonation] because I’m not there anymore. They’re screaming for me.” She recalls that after the boys bullied her, the pigs were her solace. “They are the one who talk to me; they are the one 
who, who, who make me feel better.” She’s distraught. “I almost don’t go to school because my heart break. They kill my family. They kill my brother and sister.”

After her pigs are taken, Lek is understandably sad. Then, a month later, she finds herself at the village market. “I saw the [decapitated] head of one of them. Haunting me. I remember him.” One of her pigs had a distinct mark on his face. There was no mistaking him. “I just hate people. I just hate people,” she recalls thinking at the time.

The sight of the pig’s head sets back the fragile girl. She returns to the house, sits down, and begins to bawl. The neighbor, who already thinks she’s crazy, notices. “It’s a pig. They are feed for the world. This is what they are born for; they don’t have a lot of karma.”

The not-quite-12-year-old bellows, “You will pay for karma.”

After the pig incident, Lek becomes an instant vegetarian. Soon, back in her home village, she has a similar experience, one that would foreshadow her future elephant work. “My family had a baby cow. I loved her. I talk to her.” One day an uncle was going to sacrifice the calf for a ceremony. Young Lek springs into action. “I take her—I not even come home—I take her and stay in the jungle.”

“And into the forest I go, to 
lose my mind and find my soul.”
– John Muir

As with John Muir and Henry David Thoreau, the forest becomes Lek’s respite, past and future. The lessons come early from her Shaman grandfather. “My grandfather was a great environmentalist. And he was also my first teacher,” she recounts. He taught his young granddaughter how to survive in the jungle while respecting the natural environment. Once he led her into the forest to forage. “Sit here,” he instructed. “I come back. In this 10 square meter, pick up the food that you think except no disturb nature. But pick up the food.” When her grandfather returned, she was expected to have food 
for him. She learned which mushrooms and herbs were edible and, prior to becoming vegan, which eggs tasted good. There were even lessons on relieving oneself. “He teach me how to care for the nature. Suppose you want 
to go pee. My grandfather said, ‘Look first, be careful, you don’t pee or don’t dump on the ant or the animal!’ And before that we have to pray and ask the nature to forgive,” Lek recounts with laughter. “Even today, I still do it. If I want to pee in the jungle, I look around. I don’t pee if some [animal] is here!” [everyone chuckles]

Most of all, her grandfather taught her to respect all fauna and flora. Lek acknowledges she protects elephants, other animals, and the jungle today because of these lessons. As a Shaman, he was also her village’s leader. Sometimes he had to get creative. In order to protect the forests, he told a ghost story. “My grandfather told everybody, ‘That creek have the ghosts.’ … even today they call it Ghost Creek.” From December to March, no one from the village could visit the creek because it is where the ghosts celebrate. The tall tale is passed down through the generations.

Unsurprisingly, Casper and friends stay hidden. One day the young ingénue works up the courage. “I ask some of the old men, my grandfather and uncle, ‘have you ever seen the ghost?’

“Of course! They have no necks! Some of them have the eyeball come out, the long tongue…”

The youngsters are all scared. They don’t dare visit Ghost Creek. “They talk really horrible,” Lek reminisces. But she’s persistent. Her grandfather has chosen her to pass his torch. “Grandpa, you want me to be a Shaman. Can I see the ghosts; Ghost Creek?”

“Not yet,” he says. “Before Ghost Creek, you must go to Hornbill Island.”

Grandfather takes granddaughter to Hornbill Island to observe the colorful, large-beaked birds and explains that if anyone kills a hornbill, everyone in the village will die. Out of nowhere three birds appear; they seem to know her grandfather. He talks to the birds, who are not afraid of him. Much like her pigs, he has named the birds. “I never see the giant bird fly,” recalls Lek. “Never tell people about this Hornbill Island,” her grandfather instructs. He has created a sanctuary to protect the birds from hunters, 
a lesson the young girl will never forget.

“OK, it is time to go see Ghost Creak,” the holy area, he tells his young granddaughter. Lek is instructed to close her eyes. She’s afraid … afraid of ghosts. Eventually she’s told to open her eyes. “There are no ghosts,” she remembers. Instead, she sees hundreds of thousands of shrimp, feeding on fallen leaves and laying eggs. Grandfather explains. “There never have been any ghosts. The story is made up to keep people out of the area to give the shrimp a chance to survive. Otherwise, their eggs would be taken [to be eaten] and the [shrimp] would die.”

Lek is confused; initially she doesn’t understand the lesson. “My grandfather teach me to protect. I don’t even get that. I just think my grandfather love shrimp. You know, twenty year later I understand a lot of things.”

Making an Activist
As a teen, Lek begins volunteering in the travel industry and at a missionary. While in the jungle with the missionary, she first witnesses the suffering of elephants. “I’m about 16 years old, I’m a teenage … I see the elephants in logging, [but] I not stay close to them.” Late one afternoon around dusk she hears an elephant scream [Lek mimics an elephant’s cry]. She’s asks the man in charge if she can go see. Fifty meters into the jungle, her life takes a sharp turn from which it will never return.

“I walk there and I see this elephant pulling the log. When he pull log, his body is turned around. And I can hear his bones moving. The log was big. He was screaming, but the man beat him, beat him very bad. And every time when he pull it up, the rope doesn’t move because [the log] is heavier than him. But they beat him. When they beat him, he’s so angry. It’s unbelievable. Very powerful. Very painful. Hopeless. Fear. Very confused.”

Lek and the elephant make eye contact. “The eyes, he look at me. I stand there and I feel goosebump about the [way] that bull look at me.” Lek walked out of the jungle permanently changed. “That screaming in my ear never, never, never goes away,” she recounts viscerally. Though it’s been more than 40 years since this experience, when she recounts the story, it’s as if it happened yesterday. “You know [to this day], I am very hard to sleep, because the eyes come to me in my mind.”

Lek decides she has to do something. She wants to work as a veterinarian, but she isn’t old enough. She takes a job washing dishes in the back of a restaurant. She saves her earnings, buys medicine, and goes back 
to treat the elephant.

After attending to the bull, word gets out. “When my hand touched on his bone and treat him I had more people call for me.” Soon she’s in demand. “‘Lek, there’s an elephant in that village. Sick. That elephant in that village. Sick. That elephant injury.’ The more I work, deeper into the jungle, then I see more animal injury.” People ask her why she works so hard. “I have energy from that day and I have some commitment. So I start to work and my [medicine] box got bigger and bigger. It wasn’t just only one [elephant].”

For the next decade or so Lek has a mobile clinic; attending to sick and injured elephants becomes her mission. She gets a book and teaches herself how to “treat without a doctor.” She enrolls in University, but her studies take awhile because she keeps “dipping out into the jungle.” But, as with all things Lek, she never gives up. “Normally people learn for four year. It take me six year. You know, as a Kamu, I’m the first woman to come out of the village to study.” She also experiences the usual resistance from those around her.

“Kamu women [are] born to be mothers, to raise the kids, and do the farm. No women from there dare come to study. But my mother, she have enough. She feel that it is time.” Of course there are the doubters. Her mother offers some advice. “You swear that you will not let the man touch your hand. You will not lose your virgin. You will not this; you will not that.” It was even worse from her father and the men in her village. “This girl will bring the bad luck to the village. She will pregnant home.”

But her mother persists. She takes Lek to the cemetery to visit her ancestors. She says, “You swear for them.”

Lek asks, “What I swear for, Mum?”

“Swear for my life,” says her mother.

“Meaning not my life; my mother’s life. If I have broken the rule, my mother will die. I love my mother, 
I tell you that. I love my mother dearly.” Lek completes her studies, doesn’t get pregnant, spares her mother’s life, and becomes the first woman from Baan Lao to earn a college degree.

“That’s why they call me a rebel.”

As a young adult, from 1989–1995, Lek works for the travel and tourism industry. She is a liaison of sorts between a trekking company and various elephant camps in Northern Thailand. As a representative of the tourism industry, part of her job is to speak with the elephant (riding) camp owners and advocate for humane treatment of the elephants, mostly to reassure tourists (and guidebooks). Eventually the greenwashing becomes too much.

While allegedly animal-friendly, the politics of the tourism industry and the elephant camp owners soon come to a head regarding elephant riding. For years she witnessed the mistreatment of the animals and heard industry doublespeak. All the while she watched, learned and, like her beloved spirit animal, never forgot.

She ruffles feathers on both sides until finally she’s had enough. “The more I saw the elephant riding, the more I learned. Every single day I look at them.” After six years, she quits. “Now I fully informed. I learn about elephant logging. I learn about elephant riding.” She also had a family of spies who worked for an elephant circus. “I learn about the inside; I know how much they train, how much they suffer. How much these animal get tortured and abused. I said, ‘Goodbye for travel industry.’ Goodbye for that. I know a lot. That’s why they call me a rebel. I speak from whatever I see. Fight to make it right.”

Yet her troubles were only beginning. While working in the travel industry, Lek rescued her first elephant, Mae Perm, in 1992. She had neither land nor money, but she had an idea. A sympathetic friend worked in one of the riding camps. She asked him, “Do you want to open the elephant sanctuary?” She knew he loved elephants and had some resources. They design a fake 
elephant show where they would take Mae Perm to markets and allow people to walk her around on a rope and bathe her. “And that’s all our show. The elephant doesn’t do anything but … stand, take the people to bathe the elephant. Feed elephant.” [all laugh].

After the laughter settles, Lek goes silent. Several seconds pass. Out of some buried memory, she says, seemingly out of nowhere, “You know, the people who make the elephant sanctuary, they suffer. And I accept that.” Something changes with her business partner. He starts to complain about attendance, losing money, being banged up. Lek wonders if there’s something wrong with him; something doesn’t make sense. She reassures him that building a sanctuary takes time: “Slowly it will come.”

In Thailand, a notoriously corrupt country, the elephant riding [tourist] industry has deep pockets and deeper political connections. Lek, her business partner friend, and Mae Perm, are becoming the face of the fledgling anti-elephant riding effort. Through her industry connections, she’s steering tourism companies away from the riding camps and toward her friend.

“You got to go to him. He’s humane. He’s good. And the other one is not good,” she tells anyone who’ll listen. After three years of their no-ride elephant “shows” with Mae Perm and a few other “loaner elephants”—sick and injured elephants Lek has custody of, but who don’t technically belong to her—one day they are unexpectedly forced out of their camp. While moving, their convoy is ambushed. Her friend got shot with an M16. “He died in the car in front of me.”

Lek is immediately blamed (even though she would later learn that she was the actual target). “The whole thing… everything collapse. I can’t go anywhere because I’m the one who made the [no ride] market for him. Everywhere shut the door for me.”

I’m moving and I can’t take my cat to my new apartment
Most people will most likely never find themselves homeless with four elephants. Channeling her grandfather, the undeterred Lek lifts herself up and heads back into the jungle. “Fine,” I decided. “I sold everything and bought a small piece of the land. That was my last money. I have only small bamboo hut along the river. Very tiny. I made the water pipe by bamboo. I make my own vegetable garden. In there, you know, I’m very happy.

“I have no in-laws. I married before. I lost my husband. He go to some woman. So, this is my life—elephant. So peaceful, I stay in there. And, even Mum, at that time, she came to talk to me, she say, ‘Please go back home. Your home, your business is there.’ I said, ‘No, this is my home.’ I stay in the jungle, I tell you, that is the most peaceful, the most romantic. The most beautiful time.”

While in the jungle, Lek applied for foundation (non-profit) status. She’s denied. Money is tight. When she doesn’t have enough, she heads to the University to teach environmental classes, using her earnings to pay for medicine and mahouts. She takes in two more sick elephants from the logging industry … then trouble begins once more.

Twenty-five years ago having an elephant and not using him or her to make money was a bizarre, even radical, concept. The mahouts didn’t understand (“If you don’t allow me to ride elephant, I quit”) and neither did the “owners” of the five former logging elephants Lek was rehabilitating—for free—who threatened to take “their” elephants back if they couldn’t earn some baht. Rather than lose those five elephants, Lek agrees to allow her sister and brother-in-law to grow the budding sanctuary.

“They came from America and they ask me, ‘Can we help you with this?’” They opened a restaurant and gift shop. When the operation quickly becomes sustainable, Lek relaxes, believing the elephants and the business to be in good hands. She decides to go back out with her mobile clinic to do more rescue and research, leaving the running of enterprise with her fam-ily. “But then I came back. You know what?” she recalls. “The first thing the mahout told me, ‘Do you know that you leave for three months on the research 
in the jungle, they start to have a show. Elephant show. Elephant performing.’”

At first Lek doesn’t believe it. “No, it’s not true,” she says. The mahout tells her, “Pretend to go. And then you come back.” Sure enough, upon her surprise return, she finds an elephant circus.

“Everyone out,” she barks. “I stop it right away because I have the right.”

Her family calls a meeting. “I’m like this” [Lek folds her arms defiantly across her chest]. “I don’t want this thing. I don’t want this bullshit. I never want … never want this!” The restaurant operation has been subcontracted out, but Lek won’t budge. So her family tells the company to sue her. Then the insults start to fly.

“They said I go crazy because I don’t eat meat!” Lek recalls [all laugh]. “Look at her,” says her sister. “Only crazy animal rights. Crazy about elephant; talk about animal. She have nothing. No future.” Her father chimes in, for good measure, “Why don’t you go be a nun?”

Nonchalantly, Lek says, “Sometime I get a lot of 
pressure in there. One person who make me stand is my mother. Because we eat the same thing.” Lek’s mum, who has since passed away, was her lone supporter for much of her early life. Meanwhile, the meeting drags 
on; it’s past midnight when she’s given an offer she 
can refuse: “If you want us to leave, you got to pay us 8,000,000 (baht; about $175,000).”

“I have no money. So I walk out. I walk all the elephant out into the jungle and then I start the volunteer program.”

“You can’t play city rules when 
you live in the jungle.”
– Hunter S. Thompson

Around 1997, Lek relocates from her 10-acre plot to 2,000 acres of leased government land. She starts her elephant care volunteer program (see sidebar) and again applies for foundation status. Again she’s denied. Nevertheless, the project starts to take off: A perfect, unforgettable holiday for eco-tourists opposed to using and abusing the intelligent animals; a week in the jungle with the planet’s largest mammal. Care includes gathering the elephants for food, health, and safety checks, for which the volunteers devise a game. A bell is set up in the forest; the elephants have been taught to return when they hear it ring. One evening, a volunteer runs back into camp, still holding the elephant’s medicine, huffing. “I can’t… I can’t find the elephant!”

Lek says, with assurance, “She’s there.” Mae Perm had stuffed the bell with mud and leaves so it couldn’t be rung. She was “hiding” a few feet away, a twinkle in her eye and a huge grin on her beautiful face.

The nescient, though always tenuous, sanctuary spends six years on government land. The volunteer program grows in popularity and the venture attains financial sustainability. There’s money to employ mahouts to look after the elephants, who roam free throughout the day. Still, there are problems. Lek starts to speak up a bit. “In 2002, I start to expose the story. After that, my life never peaceful again.” After the riding camps get wind of the volunteer program and claim that Lek has started a “resort” in the jungle, 30 armed men march onto the property (one of many government raids she will endure). When they stumble upon one-room bamboo huts with no toilets, they realize they’ve been duped. “They raid me because they think they have to stop me somehow.”

Then one day in 2003, Bert von Roemer visits the sanctuary. Von Roemer is the president and CEO of Serengeti Trading, a (then) three-year-old green coffee importer. “We met when Lek’s fledgling Elephant Sanctuary was two miles straight up from the river bank into the hills, on government land. At that moment, I felt … that this person was someone truly special. Someone we all needed to get involved [with] and help in her 
mission, no matter what. So, with profits from our very young coffee importing company, we funded the purchase of the magical, spiritual land upon which Elephant Nature Park now sits. With this support in place, we’ve all been in awe watching Lek and ENP soar ever since!”

“When we first move here [after] Bert bought the land in 2003, I stand here and I couldn’t believe,” recalls Lek. “I think this is … this is a dream. This is something I never believe because I have no foundation, but some man give me 6.5 million” (baht, about $145,000). The property, though a large upgrade from the government land, needs work. From dawn to dusk, the staff cleans the land and plants trees. All the years Lek spent living in jungles and protecting nature come to fruition. “I didn’t think about the future or what we don’t have somehow. I plant this tree, you know. I’m so proud that these trees belong from my hand.” Sixteen years later, trees are everywhere.

Beginning with The Ford Foundation’s “Hero of the Planet” award in 2001, Lek began to receive some fairly hefty honors. Shortly after moving to the new property, the Thai government finally granted her foundation status. “I apply for the foundation for seven year. The government not allow me [laughs]. Normally people [get it in] five months.” What changed? “After I built my name more and more and more and more, they can’t stop me.”

If you build it, they will protest
There were still a few more hurdles to navigate. Two weeks after moving to the new property, about 200 local villagers march to the sanctuary in protest. They’re barking “Out! Out! Out!” Lek walks up and asks, “What have we done wrong?”

“We don’t care. You get out. We don’t want you.” Some even threaten: “If your elephant go to our property, we kill your elephant.”

Lek, polite but firm, doesn’t back down. “I’m only 
a woman in here, you know.” She approaches the leader 
of the group. “Please let me know anything that is I have done wrong.”

“No. We don’t want you. We just don’t want you.”

Lek persists, “Give me the reason why elephant is 
a problem over here?”

“We don’t want you here. That’s it.”

Lek takes photos of the mob. Someone suggests she complain to the authorities. “I don’t give up, you know? I’m the person that does not give up. But I work for animal. I have no time to fight.” Instead, she speaks with a monk. The monk advises, “You have to relax. If you calm down and have a look … what is [it] the people [want]?”

Next the villagers use a tractor to attack a riverbank, flooding most of the property. Lek spends the next four or five months talking to officials to (try to) clear up the confusion. But they don’t have an answer. Knowing this is 
a war she can’t win, she remembers the monk’s advice. “What is the villager need?”

During the rainy season, 
their children can’t go to school. “So we decide to make 
a swing bridge for them. Because they have no bridge. Now the children can go to school.” They also build 
toilets. “Everything for the public. And then I start to 
invite the women to come and massage.”

“Well-behaved women 
seldom make history.”
– Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

But the tide finally turned when ENP started to employ—and empower—women.

When you visit the sanctuary today, you can get an authentic Thai massage from a villager. The massages are one of the many community-building projects that have contributed to the success of ENP. It started slowly. “First the women, some of them not come. But some come. You know, they very afraid. They not trust me at all,” recalls Lek. Thailand remains a very “traditional” (i.e., “male dominated”) culture. Breaking down centuries of patriarchy is just another small undertaking Lek tackles in her spare time.

Once the local women start to offer massages, their husbands arrive (as if on cue) to yell at Lek. “You cannot do that because you have foreign husband” [Lek’s husband, Darrick, is Canadian]. The men continue, “My wife. We have a custom here. You have my wife touch other man. You have a man touch my wife.”

“Blah blah blah, you know,” jokes Lek. The long 
repressed women want to work, but it’s not easy going at first. Then one day, a wild pig runs across the sanctuary, chased by a handful of village men. Lek places her 4-foot, 10-inch frame between the pig and the men and says, “That’s my pig!” [laughter]. An argument ensues, the pig escapes, and the masseuses take a break to give the men—their husbands—a piece of their minds. Lek, imitating screaming wives, “This is Lek’s property, you back up.” When the wives stood with Lek, her first thought was, “Wow, this is powerful.”

Employees and people from the local community make at least half of the crafts in the ENP gift shop. Once a week, the sanctuary offers volunteers and guests a traditional dance performance. Unlike riding camps, which charge up to 30 percent commission for these “extras,” the masseuses, cultural dancers, and crafts people at ENP—almost all women—keep 100 percent of their sales. “We share our partnership,” Lek explains.

Everyone’s birthday, from cook to maid to volunteer, 
is celebrated as well. Each Monday, an intuitive local grandmother, who has become a pseudo surrogate mother to Lek, is on duty to give blessings.

One day Lek shares with her pictures from the protest that occurred when the sanctuary first moved to the new land. Lek had recently noticed that there are no women in the photographs. “Tell me Grandmother,” she asks. “Only men protest me on that time. Can you tell me why?”

Grandmother explains. “Because it’s…it’s not about Elephant Nature Park. It is about you. Men in Thailand have a saying, ‘Women is the back foot of elephant.’ We cannot be in front. We cannot lead.”

“They see me as the leader of the organization. They can’t accept it. They don’t want me to be here. I’m a Hill Tribe. That is even worse. The other thing is I’m a conservationist. That’s makes me even terrible. They think I’m the enemy.”

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” —Nelson Mandela

The sustainable local economy that Lek and her staff have built is fairly impressive for a small mountain village (the main sanctuary is about 90 minutes north of Chiang Mai). Elephant Nature Park employs 375 people year-round and up to 450 seasonally. While most of the employees are Thai villagers, 35 percent are refugees from nearby Myanmar (Burma).

Lek carries on her Mum’s belief in education as a way to lift the tide. “We fight for the migration chil-dren,” she explains. “Most of the refugees who come 
to Thailand, their children have no right for school.” The Thai government won’t pay to educate the refugee children and there has been as many as 54 Myanmar youngsters running around paradise at any given time. When ENP offers to pay for the children’s education, the government says that no more than 40 students can be in a classroom. Undeterred as always, Lek responds, “OK. What about we make a school for you? We make extra room for the children.” The government agrees. In ad-dition to the refugees, ENP also supports more than 
100 tribal children from the deep jungle, much like her childhood.

Every Monday, the sanctuary offers transport. It picks up the children from the villages, houses them for the week while they go to school, and transports them back to their homes on Friday.

There is also “Adult Ed” of sorts, which occurs with the village women (by design) and the men (by default). For centuries, the local economy has been based on logging and fishing. Most of the men hunt as well. These activities are no longer sustainable. Logging is now outlawed; the land on which ENP sits had been logged prior to its purchase. A local politician had illegally buried 300 logs under the sand; later Lek discovered that he was the one who orchestrated the protest—and why she could never win when she tried to fight City Hall. “When I went to the authorities, I never win. Everything about me there, I’m clear, you know Whatever the accusation is not true. But I never win.” The illegal logging would have devastating consequences.

Electric shock, explosives, and cyanide are used to harvest fish. Birds are hunted to near extinction in the shrinking forests. “Tradition” is often associated with people who don’t want to change, or don’t know how. Yet the solution for moving away from unsustainability toward something better was right in front of the men … if they’d only stop dragging their back foot.

“So since that time, I decided to work with the local community,” explains Lek. “We support The Woman for Conservation Network. The women, here, they have no education.” In addition to 
the financial support, she offers empowerment. “Let them select 
the president. Bring them to seminar. Show them outside. Let them learn and talk to the others.”

And then the floods came. In 2011, massive rainfall during monsoon season had much of the country under water. Landslides were common. Even Bangkok, hundreds of miles to the south, was flooded. Lek coordinated volunteer efforts in Northern Thailand for her staff and villagers, then left for the capital to rescue more than 2,000 dogs from the floodwaters. After several months traveling back and forth, she returns (with 155 dogs) only to be stopped by her gate man. “Mum, wait, I want to report something to you. The man in the village get arrest.”

Lek asks, “Who?”

“Over 20 man, the police put in the big truck. They get arrest.”

“What about?”

“Cut the log. Illegal log on there.”

“But who called… who called the police to arrest them?”

“I don’t know. No idea.”

Lek was thankful she’d been in Bangkok, knowing fingers would point at her if she’d been around. She approaches her employees and asks, “I heard that the village men get arrest. Can you tell me who get arrest?”

“My husband. Her husband. Her father. Her brother.”

“Oh, who called the police to arrest?” she asks. All the women raise their hands. Confused, she inquires, “What? Why do you call the police to arrest?”

They explain. “Stupid men. They cut the tree. One day the landslide kill our children.” Ten village children died during the landslides. Some of Lek’s employees witnessed their own lifeless sons and daughters pulled from the mud. “They don’t think. We put them in jail. They come back, we get the new husband. Reformed.” [All laugh]

“The woman is working here, they have money. They raise the kids for the school, they control the house. Now we have a head man is a woman.” The local women even found work for their reformed husbands. Once out of jail they are told, “Go, work with Lek!”

“So the man come and work with us.” Lek nods toward her husband Darrick. “They become his crew. And they don’t cut the tree anymore.”

The Save Elephant Foundation
Though the 300-acre Elephant Nature Park north of Chiang Mai is arguably better known, it 
is but one project of the Save Elephant Foundation, the NGO that it took Lek seven years to officially have recognized. The Save Elephant Foundation oversees or supports a number of animal sanctuaries. To learn more about these projects, visit Save Elephant Foundation.

Elephant Nature Park by the Numbers
Acres: 300
Employees: 375–450
Animals: More than 1,500 including…
Dogs: 400–500
Cats: 250
Elephants: 75
(most of the elephants are “special needs” rescued from logging, trekking, tourism (riding and begging), and land mines.
There are also pigs, rabbits, and water buffaloes…

Ways you can help Elephant Nature Park

The global pandemic lockdown affected most of the world’s animal sanctuaries, particularly those that relied on in-person volunteer help. Volunteers can still contribute by way of donations, but also in the following ways:

• Visit the park, or tell your family and friends that they are welcome to visit our website and park, or sign 
up as a volunteer
• Follow us, Tweet, and share our activities on our 
social network community
• Donate directly to Save Elephant Foundation
• Let people at home know that there are only 30,000 Asian Elephants left on the planet (imagine this in human terms, as under a third of a sports stadium crowd)
• Do not support elephant poachers by buying ivory 
or skin products whether allegedly legally obtained or not; demand causes death to these innocent creatures
• Write a story for your local newspaper describing the plight of the elephant and how we can all assist in their survival
• Order something from the Save Elephant Foundation online shop; all proceeds help
• Sponsor an animal at our park and beyond
• Buy some of our ENP Coffee (USA Direct ordering and subscriptions)
• Help fulfill our wish list

For more, visit Elephant Nature Park.

I have distinct hope for change and see a brighter future for the captive working elephant. Most elephant owners similarly worry about the situation and have grave concerns about the future of the tourist industry. Hopefully we can arrive at a common ground, paving the way for positive change. I could not be here to help the elephant without all of your kind support and generous contributions. Thank you on behalf of all Thai elephants. —Lek Saengduean Chailert

The Save Elephant Foundation
Though the 300-acre Elephant Nature Park north of Chiang Mai is arguably better known, it is but one project of the Save Elephant Foundation, the NGO that it took Lek seven years to officially have recognized. The Save Elephant Foundation oversees or supports all of the following projects and sanctuaries:

Dog Rescue Project
Care for Elephants
Elephant Haven
Elephant Nature Park
Elephant Sanctuary Cambodia
Forest Restoration
Journey to Freedom
Karen Elephant Experience
Myanmar Elephant Project
Pamper a Pachyderm
Sunshine for Elephants
Surin Project
Thailand Cares

Many of these projects offer opportunities to “volunteer” for a day, week, or longer. Students, tourists, and retirees pay a fee to participate; funds go toward keeping the projects and SEF going. There are dozens of different opportunities. In addition, veterinarians and vet techs are always needed.

Bert von Roemer

How did I know she was for real? There was a huge old bull elephant who had his tusks cut off (stolen). His head was chronically infected. He was always in pain. Lek and her assistant, Pom, would treat this bull every day. Pom would load up a ‘super soaker’ toy with light antiseptic water and spray it right into the vacant tusk cavity, right into the Bull’s head. And tiny Lek would reach up, her ENTIRE arm, shoulder deep up into the bulls head, pulling out handfuls of pus. THAT is a warrior. And I never forgot that.

I asked her to show me the land she hoped to buy. It was small. I asked if there was anything else available? She showed me the land where ENP now sits. I loved it … and told her that she needed to try and buy it. The next day I flew home and three days later I sent her a wire for $145,000.

Bert and Serengeti Trading now offer an ENP coffee that supports the sanctuary.

Lek’s Dietary Wisdom
“I will never touch chicken because I have a chicken. My chicken lay egg on my bed! I go to the farm, she fly across the creek. I carry her sometimes. She come everywhere with me. People will think I’m crazy!

“[My mother was] a vegetarian. She raised her kids that way … our food was 90 percent vegan. Like today, bird seed on my plate.

“Life is not perfect. My village [had] a slaughterhouse; I saw a lot of animal suffer. Cow, buffalo … they run, they fight. I saw the cow stabbed many times and want to survive. I was there. I witnessed that. I saw all kind of animal suffer before they become meat. I would never eat anything that suffer.”

Awards and Honors
Ford Foundation’s “Hero of the Planet,” 2001.
Genesis Award, 2003
Time Magazine’s Heroes of Asia
(for her work in conservation), 2005
Women Heroes of Global Conservation, 2010
(from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton)

Social Activities at ENP
Volunteers and staff are fed three all-you-can
eat buffet-style veg meals a day.
Monday Grandmother blessings
Wednesday Thai language lessons
Thursday Massage; Traditional dance
Friday Mahout band!
Saturday Special dinner;
Student performance