In this video we talk about how to live with wild elephants at the OurLand Wildlife Reserve.
Living with these wild asian elephants for the past 6 years has been the most amazing experience of my life.But I have to say that living with elephants is not easy, it's not something that everyone can easily adapt to. Despite being so amazed and mesmerized by their beauty, their destructive ability is one that you truly need much patience to accept.
Over the years, we at OurLand have learned that if we dont ‘elephant proof’ everything, then we will surely lose it. Water is a crucial element of life, I don't think we humans, or atleast most humans really ever understand how important water is. Try not drinking water for one day, and you’ll start to skim the surface of what these wild elephants go through.
An elephant consumes 150-200 litres of water in one day. In summer seasons, when water reserves inside the Salakphra reserve run dry, elephants have to wait almost a day before they can cross over the road and get to the river. Which is where trouble starts with any villagers living between Salakphra and the river.
Any water bearing container will become a target by the elephants. We learned this the hard way in our first year. We would leave bird water feeders, watering cans and barrels outside, only to find it completely crushed the next day.
Not only was the water gone, but the container itself would be crushed to beyond use. Remember that it's been proven in Africa that elephants can smell water from over 19kms, so anywhere there is water, they will find it, especially when they have been this thirsty all day.
I still remember trying to salvage a large plastic barrel that we had paid 450 THB for.
The elephant had simply crushed it down the middle after consuming the water. We stuck a stick down the flattened barrel, and spent a good one hour trying to straighten it out, and finally succeeded only to have a weirdly shaped barrel that leaked from one of the points that had been folded by the elephant.
The thing is, in normal living, even when you live maybe in a rural place, you just don't think about protecting your water containers. You don't expect a big large being to come and destroy everything that contains water.
Month by month, we learned this lesson. If it contains water, it either has to be kept indoors, or high up, or protected from the elephant somehow.
Take the case of our main water tank, not only did we have to place it 3 meters high u
p, but we also had bamboo pillars attached to its side, so that the elephant would not pull down the whole tank. When we thought of building our rain water harvesting tank, we were so tempted to go for a plastic tank, which would have cost us only THB 6000, but instead we ended up spending THB 20,000 for a concrete ring tank, and I am so grateful for doing this.
Do stay tuned for part 2!
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"OurLand is an ethical business located in Kanchanaburi, Thailand where we function as a nature reserve, eco-village, and a nature education center. As one of the first privately managed nature reserves in Thailand, we are working to model a more harmonious way of coexisting with the world around us and operate on the pillars of nature conservation, sustainability, and education.
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www.ourlandthailand.com
28 авг 2021
