Research Question
How effective are the elephant sanctuaries in Thailand and laws put in place at protecting elephants, and how will this affect their endangerment severity considering their important role in the ecosystem within the next decade?
Claim
Elephants are important ecosystem engineers and are integrally tied to rich biodiversity. Still, their population is steadily decreasing in Thailand because of abuse, lack of financial support to reserves and sanctuaries, especially now due to Covid-19 and the significant lack of tourists. Asian elephants help maintain forest and savanna ecosystems for other species just by walking around and imprinting footprints; they enable micro-organisms that, when filled with water, can provide a home for tadpoles and other organisms; they make pathways in densely forested habitats, which allows for the passage of other animals. As keystone species, they help maintain the biodiversity of the ecosystems they inhabit. Elephants are the largest mammals in Asia and Africa, and because of this, they play a really unique and often irreplaceable role in the ecosystem. They help preserve the quality of ecosystems in forests and grasslands. Their massive scale makes it easier to establish roads into the thick woodland they travel along, providing access for other wildlife. They can spend up to 19 hours a day grazing, and when walking around an area that can span up to 324 square kilometres, they can produce about 100 kilograms of dung per day. It helps to spread seeds that germinate. As stated by the WWF, there are currently about 50,000 Asian elephants left - this makes them “endangered”. Of those, there are an estimated 3 - 4,000 elephants in Thailand and around half of this number are domesticated, with the remaining living wild in National Parks Reserves (2019). The primary long-term goals of rewilding the elephants should align with the Sustainable Development Goals to ensure a holistic approach that ensures that mahouts, elephant owners, local and communities all benefit from conserving the national elephant population in wild habitat. The WWF and other NGOs have already implemented laws that illegalise poaching, put antipoaching controls in place, confiscate weapons such as snares, and educate people about the regulations. Such laws have proved useful, but people find loopholes in them manage to avoid the issue at hand.
Picture credit: RECOFT
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