Chiang Mai: About 100 rescued elephants escaped from flash floods at a popular sanctuary in northern Thailand

Bangkok
CNN
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Flash floods swept through a popular elephant sanctuary in northern Thailand on Thursday, forcing the evacuation of about 100 elephants and detaining dozens of tourists amid urgent pleas for help.

Dramatic video and photos from the Elephant Nature Park near the city of Chiang Mai show dozens of elephants wading through belly-deep water to find shelter on higher ground.

“It was the largest evacuation we have ever done to save their lives, the water level rose rapidly,” Saengduean “Lek” Chailert, founder of Elephant Nature Park, told CNN, calling the floods the most severe the park has ever experienced.

The footage shows park staff working with the elephants, known as mahouts, shouting “Keep going, keep going” as they herd the huge fat lions out of their enclosures and through high floodwaters.

Although many animals took refuge on a nearby mountain early Thursday morning, Saengduean said the danger was not over yet.

“We couldn’t evacuate some animals yesterday. Thirteen adult elephants are still trapped in their quarters. They panic,” Saengduean said.

Northern Thailand has been hit by severe floods and landslides in recent weeks due to heavy rains brought by Typhoon Yagi, the most powerful storm in Asia this year, which tore through the region in mid-September and killed dozens of people.

Authorities in Chaing Mai, a popular tourist destination in Thailand, have issued warnings of potential flooding as water levels along the Ping River, which flows through the city, have reached dangerous levels.

Due to extensive flooding around the park and water levels still rising, the sanctuary’s founder said he faced the undesirable prospect of having to evacuate the animals again.

“The situation is much worse than yesterday,” she said, adding that she had requested urgent help from Thai authorities.

The priority is to get a boat so that the mahouts can stay with the other elephants in the park and give them peace, she added.

“We urgently need volunteers and animal cages because we need to move the animals to the mountains due to the complete closure of roads in both directions,” the park wrote in a post on Facebook.

Saengduean said there are also about 30 foreign volunteers trapped at the sanctuary, including five Americans, some of whom have been working at the park for several weeks.

Elephant Nature Park is an elephant rescue and rehabilitation center in rural Chiang Mai that has rescued over 200 elephants from the tourism and logging industries since its establishment in the 1990s. It also runs tours and volunteer programs that allow visitors to observe animals or help with conservation efforts.

Many elephants are blind or have physical injuries that make it difficult for them to escape and complicate evacuation.

“Among the evacuated animals there are many sick elephants, some of them can barely walk. We had to help them get to the bottom of the mountain. We desperately need help,” Saengduean said.

In addition to elephants, there are approximately 5,000 rescued animals in the park, including dogs, cats, horses, pigs and rabbits. Some of them were evacuated in recent days after the authorities issued a flood warning.

Local media reported on Thursday that several villages in Chiang Mai’s Mae Rim district were flooded by runoff from upstream.

In recent decades, the wild population of elephants, Thailand’s national animal, has declined due to threats from tourism, logging, poaching and human encroachment on elephant habitats.

Experts estimate that Thailand’s wild elephant population has dropped to 3,000 to 4,000, down from more than 100,000 in the early 20th century.