For many years now, Y Lu Eban residing in Krong Na Commune in Buon Don District has been taking care of a 50-year-old elephant named H'Pló
"Elephants eat a lot and every day they spend up to 90 percent of their time eating. My five-tonne elephant has to eat about 500 kilos of food daily,” he added.
He has been participating in the elephant-friendly tourism model in Yok Don National Park for three years now. Before that, he also had nearly a decade of offering tourists elephant rides.
He said he had witnessed elephants being driven to exhaustion and becoming more aggressive.
"In 2017, when I was contacted by Animals Asia Foundation (AAF) to bring my elephant into the forest for a friendly tourism model, I immediately agreed," he recalled.
Last March, Y Khu Eban in Krong Na Commune also signed a contract with AAF to bring his 33-year-old elephant Ta Non into Yok Don National Park to participate in the tourism model.
He refused to disclose the value of the contract, but he said that he still takes care of his elephant every day and is fully paid to cover his living.
"The most basic thing is that my elephant is free and it doesn’t have to work hard but I still have a stable income,” he said.
Y Khu said his elephant had carried tourists since 2001. His elephant is now old and tired so he decided to return it to the forest.
Tran Duc Phuong, deputy director of the Centre for Environmental Education and Services under Yok Don National Park, said the elephant-friendly tourism model has been implemented since 2017.
Under the model, elephants do not have to carry tourists but are free to search for food and live freely in the forest.
Currently, there are eight elephants brought into the Yok Don National Park for the model.
"All eight elephants are directly taken care of by their former owners, which helps ensure they have a stable income, while the elephants receive the best conditions in their natural environment," said Phuong.
In 2022 alone, more than 2,000 visitors registered to participate in the elephant-friendly tourism model. Many people even spent many days just following elephants, watching them find food, bathing and living in the forest.
Dak Lak used to be known as Vietnam’s kingdom of elephants and in the 1980s, the province had more than 500 elephants. This number has sadly declined to only 140 today.
They live mainly in Buon Don and Lak Districts. Most are domesticated and there are only 37 left in the wild.
