Saving a Tree

by Simon

In the picture I am saving a tree in Elephant Heaven. The Elephant Heaven was made by Lek before Elephant Nature Park (ENP). Lek and every other staff member's goal is to stop elephant trekking, begging and circus acts, and to stop the cruel way they train elephants for these things.

We want to save the trees because when people cut them down they are destroying the elephants' habitat. By destroying their habitat they will make the 600 wild elephants in Thailand decrease in number by more each year.

The crazy thing is that there are also 1500 domesticated elephants. That's like three time as many as wild. Many of them used to be involved in logging until it was banned. Now these umemployed elephants are used for trekking and other tourist things.

The robes that you use to save a tree come from a Buddist temple, and they have holy water on them. The reason you can't cut down a tree with a non-faded robe is people believe cutting the tree will give you bad luck for the rest of your life. The reason I say, "non-faded," is because if it is faded you can cut it down and not have bad luck. We saw trees with several old and new robes on them.

I really liked Elephant Heaven but I only got to stay there for one night. I stayed at ENP for seven days minus the day in heaven.

My favourite things to do at ENP was feeding the elephants and cleaning their mud pit. We fed them corn, bananas, winter melon and pumpkin. Two times a day you feed them by placing the food close to their trunk, then they grab it by curling the end of their trunk around the food and putting it in their mouth.

The elephants like to play in the mud pit after having a bath in the river.