Welcome to the Elephant Dream Project
Our project aim is help keep the elephants of northern Thailand in a natural habitat. Here at Elephant Dream Project we have lived with elephants for generations. Before the pandemic, the elephants were supported through tourism income. After the effects of the pandemic all of our elephants have been returned to the village. We love having the elephants back in their natural habitat but this comes at a cost. The forest only blooms during rainy season and there isn’t enough land for these elephant to thrive. Here at Elephant Dream Project we aim to provide them with the best life possible. We do this by keeping them in their natural habitat and without forcing them to comply with tourism schemes. The elephants stay with their family groups and are taken care of daily by their mahouts. Our elephants thrive living in their natural environment and have a much better life than any others involved in the tourism industry.
With every visit to our Elephant Dream Project you are helping us to let our elephants have the happy and free lives they deserve. We hope that as more people visit our project we can bring more and more elephants back home from the cities – living as nature intended.
The aim of our project is to inspire other elephant keepers to start the same eco-tourism schemes as ourselves and keep the elephants in their natural habitat and with the best life possible. This will benefit the conservation of the Asian elephant species and keep their numbers blooming in the Northern Thailand area.
Mission
At Elephant Dream Project, we live by the pyramid of happiness and believe that for an establishment to sustainably succeed, the focus should be on the elephants, their care takers, and the communities that surrounds them.
Vision
We live to educate you so that in turn we can all empower the local community together.
Why Us ?
With so many elephant sanctuaries and camps to choose from, it is difficult for a visitor to know which camp are the most ethical. What most visitors may not know is that a majority of elephant sanctuaries, even some that claim to be ethical, are operated and run by non-local investors and corporations who exploit elephants and their local caregivers.
In our village, we have many elephants that have been passed down to us from previous generations. We spend our days taking the best care of the elephants as we feel they are like family to us. With the current rate of deforestation by big businesses and investors, we are losing land to raise and provide proper care and grow crops for our elephants. Giving us no other option but to relocate closer to the city and rely on tourism as income in hope of better lives for both our people and elephants. However, we had little knowledge on how to use the internet to market and attract visitors to our own sanctuary. We ended up agreeing to lending our elephants and caretakers to a contract with an international investor who promised a humane, ethical, and profitable sanctuary business but as time went on, we found out that wasn’t true. The investor did not see the elephants or their caretakers as important but only focused on the profits. They buy the cheapest crops that are left over from previous harvesting to feed the elephants leaving no nutritional value left and forcing them to swim in cold water during winter season against their will for the sake of “profit”. Giving us bare minimum funding to care for the elephants and keeping most of the profits from villagers and caretakers while marketing themselves as “humane and ethical to the elephants while supporting the local”.
According to the above matter, we have decided to start our own truly humane and ethical elephant sanctuary where profits will go directly to fund the best care and well being of our elephants and supporting local villagers called “Elephants Dream Project”.
