One sanctuary seeks to help save Myanmar’s timber elephants

Often when you’re traveling you just stumble upon things, things that end up changing your life. I was in the hill station of Kalaw in Myanmar when I looked at the itinerary that Jacada Travel had printed for me and saw “Elephant Sanctuary.” Htun Htun Wynn and Tin Win Maw both grew up in Myanmar’s timber industry, and when they got married they decided to start a sanctuary for several of the elephants. All of them were over 40 years old, with the exception of a baby who’d been rescued from a trap two years ago. All of the elephants had been caught in the wild and “broken” — a vicious, brutal process in which an animal is “tamed,” sometimes involving beatings, fire, and other forms of torture (several of the elephants had long-healed scars). In the timber camps, some elephants are treated well, others are not.

They worked their whole lives for us. Now it is our turn to give back.

Htun Htun, founder of Elephant Sanctuary

Myanmar is facing a crisis of epic proportions. The country has only 20 percent of its teak forests left, so a ban on timber was placed in April. By mid-2015 all the logging elephants will be out of work with nowhere to go. That makes them prime targets for poaching.

Asia-Pacific elephants