Animal Welfare Organization in India urges tourists to stop riding elephants

Ahead of World Elephant Day on Monday (August 12), World Animal Protection held a bicycle rally on the streets of Jaipur the previous Sunday, August 11. The rally was aimed at urging tourists to stop using elephants as a means of transportation to Amber Fort and instead use bicycles.

According to the Guardian, around 100 elephants are used to carry tourists on the kilometer-long route to the Fort. The average combined weight of tourists, elephant handlers and wooden chairs can be up to 300kg, while the road up to the Fort is very steep and covered with hard rocks.

“It’s not just the cruel methods used to train them, but the fact that many elephants suffer from health problems. Many suffer from tuberculosis, blood diseases, blindness, malnutrition and leg injuries from walking on rough roads,” said Kirsty Warren from the organisation.

World Animal Protection has also proposed several alternatives to the local government. "Instead of riding elephants, we want tourists to use bicycles, but not on that steep road but on a flatter road to the Fort. We are also lobbying the government to open an elephant sanctuary near the Fort so that tourists can visit them in their natural environment. This could be a new tourist attraction."

However, the elephant owners say that this activity needs to be maintained because it is their livelihood. The Indian Ministry of Tourism considers elephant rides as a form of tourist attraction. Many tourists choose elephant rides instead of jeeps because they want to experience something new.

For years, animal rights groups in India and PETA have been campaigning against the use of elephants as transport, but have only been able to convince them to reduce the maximum number of passengers on elephants from four to two, and to reduce the maximum number of rides to five per day in winter and three per day in summer.

Lan Oanh