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As we’ve discovered in previous articles, there are many and varied experiences that you can have with elephants in Asia. So, how do you find the ethical ones?

Let me step back for a minute and explain the history of the Asian elephant, once highly revered and domesticated for work and warfare. Far from the estimated population of hundreds of thousands of elephants centuries ago, according to the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, it’s estimated that between only 25,000 and 32,000 Asian elephants are now left in the wild. Since 1986, the Asian elephant has been listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN).

Today in Thailand, according to Boon Lott’s Elephant Sanctuary (BLES), their numbers are between 3,500 to 5,000 and currently ‘the notion of extinction is no longer just a concern; it’s the new reality’.

In 1989, the tradition of using elephants in industry ended, mainly due to irresponsible over-logging. The collapse of the industry created huge problems for the mahouts who had to find a way to pay for the care and upkeep of their elephants.

As discussed in previous articles, elephants eat up to 200 kilograms a day and on hot days need about 200 litres of water. With the ban of logging, mahouts had to find other ways to support their huge charges. This is why mahouts began begging in the streets and turned to illegal logging and to tourism via trekking, rides or entertainment.

Along the Thai-Burma border illegal logging still occurs. It is a dangerous environment where landmines are still hidden, the risk of fines is always present and injury or death could be just around the corner. To get the most from the elephants, they are often given amphetamines to reduce their appetite and increase their work output. Not only does this take a horrific toll on the elephant, it’s also unsustainable and many elephants simply die of overwork and starvation.

The tourism industry may be a viable alternative but it can be a tricky one, because there is always a risk of exploitation when animals and commercialisation meet.

The Elephant Asia Rescue and Survival Foundation says it ‘believes responsible elephant tourism can help to save the elephants throughout Asia but only if camps maintain the highest level of elephant care, food requirements, hygiene and environmental enrichment’.

So what does that involve?

Purists in the ethical elephant world do not encourage you to ride elephants, however some people, myself included, have experienced this on the neck of an elephant and loved it. The experience of simply touching an elephant – Dr Andrew McLean says like horses, elephants liked to be stroked – and being close to one of these beautiful giants is just as amazing though.

If you want to ride an elephant, the best experience for the elephant, and I believe for you too, is to ride on its neck (behind the ears) not on a trekking chair which goes on the elephant’s back. A fully-grown elephant can carry up to 150 kilograms on its back, but when you consider the weight of two people, the chair (it’s called a Howdah or saddle and alone can weigh 100 kilograms or more) and the mahout (who rides on the neck) you can see how this starts to be a heavy burden on the elephant.

In addition, some trekking camps overwork their elephants and leave the chairs on all day, which is unacceptable. The elephants can also be at risk of developing sores from where the trekking chairs are positioned on their backs and where they are attached – usually under their tail and legs.

Elephants need stimulation, enrichment and the freedom to behave naturally, which they cannot get if they are forced to cart people around all day with a heavy load.  They need a gentle, minimal amount of exercise per day for their physical and mental health, but should not be overworked. Depending on the temperature and the terrain, elephants should not be made to walk at a brisk pace for more than four hours a day. They also need their rest time.

Another thing to look out for at camps is the use of the bullhook. When used properly by a mahout, a bullhook can be used to guide the elephant. Unfortunately, bullhooks are often misused and, if you see bloody wounds on an elephant’s head or under their armpits or inside their ears or mouth, it’s likely the elephant is being mistreated. As in my experience, you may be told it’s necessary and doesn’t hurt the elephant, but this is untrue.

When the elephant is not working, ensure that where it’s being kept has plenty of food and fresh water and is sheltered from the elements, as it can get very hot in many parts of Asia. Remember that elephants eat a lot and should spend between 14 to 18 hours a day eating. They should be provided with a balanced diet including fresh fruits (which they love). Feeding areas should be away from where elephants defecate and urinate. You wouldn’t like to stand in your excretions and neither do they.

Watching an elephant closely can give a good indication of its health and happiness. Healthy elephants move almost constantly; swishing their tail to keep annoyances like flies away and flapping their ears to cool themselves. If these actions are absent, it could be a sign of ill-health.

A sign of great disturbance, is when an elephant ‘rocks’. This is a movement where they sway from side to side continually, sometimes with their whole bodies and sometimes swinging their legs with the action. It’s distressing to see and, according to The Elephant Asia Rescue and Survival Foundation, is ‘an indicator of deep stress, boredom and a lack of environmental enrichment and a sure sign of elephant cruelty that needs to be addressed’. Click here to see an example

Elemotion, a non-profit foundation educating the public to improve elephants’ lives, also claim that this rocking from side-to-side behaviour in elephants is not seen in the wild and elephant experts believe it is a sign of nervousness and stress.

The best place to visit elephants is in their natural environment, or as close to it as possible (which becomes more and more difficult as natural habitat is destroyed). You can, however, find these environments at camps or sanctuaries where there are places for the elephants to roam and feed away from tourists and where the needs of the elephants – not the tourists – come first. Look for camps with ‘low impact’ activities that are easy on the elephants but still provide an income to their mahouts.

One place where you can ride elephants in Thailand in an ethical environment is Baan Chang Elephant Park a relatively new elephant camp north of Chiang Mai.

The owner of this Park, Pom, worked as an elephant trekking guide but became increasingly upset at the long hours and amount of work the elephants were forced to do. So, he decided to use his savings and start his own elephant park offering a newer and gentler type of elephant activity called Elephant Mahout Training.

At Baan Chang Elephant Park visitors can learn what it’s like to be a mahout. They teach visitors about the importance of elephant care and husbandry including correct eating, sleeping, bathing and exercise. One method of providing gentle exercise for the elephants and an amazing learning experience for the visitor is to allow them to ride elephants naturally behind their ears without the use of a trekking chair.

At the Park, there are no elephants painting or being trained to perform tricks. The Park is also against separating baby elephants from their mother. They do, however, rescue and provide care for orphaned baby elephants. Ban Chang Elephant Park is currently home to 12 rescued elephants, most of which were formerly used in street begging.

In Laos, about one hour outside of Luang Prabang is the Elephant Park Project. In the very relaxed Laos, the elephants here have also been rescued from logging. The mahouts are gentle with them, and have little to no use of the bullhook and they are provided plenty of rest and bath time and feeding at night away from the camp.

Like the Baan Change Elephant Park, they provide a mahout experience. A couple of things aren’t perfect about the Elephant Park Project. Although the majority of riding is on the elephant’s neck, they still use some trekking chairs. If you visit, request that they don’t use it for you or your friends. The elephants visit a different part of the forest every night and they are chained, due to their close proximity to neighbouring villages. Although this is not an ideal practice, in this neck of the woods, it is necessary for the welfare of both the elephants and the villagers.

In Laos, the elephant population is now thought to be between only 500 to 1,000 – which is devastating. Two of the elephants at the Park, Mae Cot and Mae Boun Nam, are blind in one eye, in their 60s and the best of friends. I absolutely, without question, fell in love with both of these magnificent, gentle creatures – the grand old dames of the Elephant Park Project.

Mae Cot was such a sweetie and preferred to receive her bananas (that we lavished upon her and the others) via her mouth not her trunk. I also learnt pretty quickly that it was best to serve her from her ‘good eye’ side – which not only made sense, but gave her a good view of who to manipulate into providing more! She indeed remembered me every day and was such a sweet creature.

Mae Cot is the perfect example of the capacity of elephants to forgive humans for their abuse. She had a distinctive kink in her tail that was a result of a logging accident, as was her blind eye. After years of abuse, she now seems happy in her new home and was a clear favourite with the mahouts.

Two other parks that offer up-close experiences with elephants, but no riding, is BLES run by Katherine Connor and her team – mentioned in previous articles – and the Elephant Nature Park (ENP) an hour north of Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. Its founder Sangduen Lek Chailert, began her love affair with elephants early in her life, rescuing injured and mistreated elephants in 1992 and in 2003 established Elephant Nature Park. Lek is a true voice for Asian elephants and has been the subject of several documentaries. Among many accolades, she was named a Hero of Asia by Time Magazine in 2005 for her dedication to elephants.

ENP is home to 35 rescued elephants who are now free to roam, eat and play to their hearts’ content. They can wander down to the river for a splash or a roll in the mud or join in at feeding time at the visitors’ platform. Their elephants are free to choose their own family group and can have as much or as little human interaction as they choose.

If you would rather walk beside an elephant than ride on top of one, BLES and the ENP are the perfect places for an unforgettable up-close elephant experience.

Ethical interactions with elephants:
Laos:
Elephant Park Project.
Thailand:
Baan Chang Elephant Park
Elephant Nature Park (ENP)
Boon Lott’s Elephant Sanctuary (BLES)

Joyce Poole has a PhD in elephant behaviour from Cambridge University and is co-founder of Elephant Voices, an organisation aimed at securing a kinder future for elephants through research and the sharing of knowledge.

Joyce has studied the social behaviour and communication of elephants for more than 30 years, dedicating herself to their conservation and welfare.

At Elephant Voices Joyce writes: ‘As the role of elephants as beasts of burden declined, people sought to put them to other work instead. In recent years the use of elephants in tourism has become an industry in itself. Elephant-backed safaris, elephant polo, elephant football, elephant painting, elephant orchestras, elephant orphanages, elephant begging have each become popular sight-seeing activities and/or destinations for foreign visitors. While some of these activities provide a source of income to care for needy elephants, others are exploitative and mask cruel realities.’

Tricks in Asian elephant circuses or shows may also include basketball, throwing darts at balloons, twirling hoops in the air, balancing on their front and back legs, headstands, playing musical instruments, riding bicycles or painting.

Joyce says that ‘to persuade an elephant to work – including to carry tourists – a mahout must ensure that it follows instructions at all times. This, by [traditional] necessity, means breaking down an elephant’s independent will. To do so, calves are chained, beaten, deprived of social interaction. It is an ugly truth.’

So, why is it an ugly truth?

In order to ‘train’ the baby elephant (calf) to perform tricks, often a mother and her calf will be separated far too early in the development of the calf, usually at about three years, but sometimes as early as 18 months. Calves are naturally weaned from their mother at about three to five years of age.

Males usually leave the herd at around 10 years of age, but often still hang around in bachelor groups of other young males – associations that can last for years or lifetimes. .

Female elephants are social creatures and form strong family ties. In the wild, female elephants stay with their herd for their lifetime, under the leadership of an older female also known as the matriarch. In fact, young calves are attended to, not only by their mothers, but also by other females in the herd – grandmothers, sisters, aunties and cousins. See this short video clip for a powerful example.

There has been much documentation of females welcoming newborns into herds with behaviour such as standing close to the mother and calf, touching with their trunks, trumpeting and other behaviours.

There’s also been documentation of herds appearing to ‘console’ a mother when they have lost a calf, or had one taken away. When coming across the remains of one of their herd, elephants have been known to go through what could only be described as mourning; sniffing and trumpeting and often staying around the bones for days at a time. They have also been known to carry around the bones of their former family members for days.

So, mothers and their young have strong social bonds, important for the health and wellbeing of the young as well as the herd. When these are broken, there are many possible implications. One of the criticisms of the elephant entertainment industry is that calves are taken from their mothers at an age when the bond and the support of the mother and the herd are still needed. This enforced separation can be devastating for the baby as well as the mother and the herd.

If you‘ve seen an elephant perform, no doubt you’ve marvelled that an elephant can kick a soccer ball or throw darts or paint. It is, however, a myth to believe that this comes naturally. It doesn’t. If you were to watch them in the wild or roaming free at elephant sanctuaries, these tricks would be nowhere in sight.

Although ‘positive reinforcement’ techniques are slowly being introduced to mahouts in Asian countries, older, traditional techniques rely on ‘breaking’ elephants, which, as the name suggests, involves ‘breaking’ the elephant’s spirit into submission. This includes beatings, the use of restraints such as ropes and chains, isolation from his or her herd and so on.

Carol Buckley, who has a lifetime of experience with elephants (and is well considered in the elephant industry), is a proponent of positive reinforcement techniques, as is Australian Dr Andrew McLean.

Carol says ‘traditionally, mahouts are indoctrinated that elephants can be controlled through dominance. Compassionate Elephant Management (CEM) is an alternative – an effective way to manage elephants using positive reinforcement.’

CEM draws on years of work, and according to Carol, ‘is a system of caring for and training a captive elephant, free of punishment and infliction of pain, that enables a mahout and elephant caregiver to manipulate the elephant’s behaviour, while manoeuvring safely around or atop him/her, in a free-contact environment’.

The traditional ‘breaking’ of elephants is definitely not free of punishment or infliction of pain. The term ‘phajaan’ is often used when describing the breaking of elephants. A quick Google search will reveal the cruelty of this practice.

Documentary maker Michelle Mizner, who spent two years making a documentary on elephants with Don Tayloe, The Last Elephants, says their documentary was a ‘passion project’ which began as a small story about an elephant hospital in Thailand but soon grew into something bigger.

‘As we were filming and made aware of the hardships faced everyday by domesticated elephants and the humans who care for them, we knew we had an urgent responsibility to share,’ says Michelle.

She says, ‘People love elephants. So it’s heartbreaking to learn that something as innocent and alluring as an elephant painting can actually be the result of serious torture.’

The Elephant Asia Rescue and Survival Foundation says ‘if you think it’s cute to watch an elephant perform you would change your mind if you saw the “behind the scenes” training which is more often than not cruel, abusive and pain-inflicted. Training an elephant for circus shows is unnatural and cruel.’

Not only is the training cruel, but the elephant is made to perform the same repetitive tricks over and over, day after day. Often, such as when painting, a mahout is ready with a ‘correction’ via bullhook if an elephant makes an incorrect or unintended brush stroke. This, obviously, is far from natural; elephants do not paint in the wild.

If you want to know how elephants really act, give yourself a wonderful treat and read Katherine Connor’s blog, starting at the start. I’ve read it twice now and it runs the full gamut of the trials and tribulations of saving elephants and running a sanctuary.

English born, Katherine established BLES in northern Thailand after a holiday in Asia where she fell in love with baby elephant, Boon Lott. When Boon Lott died from abuse and neglect, Katherine’s life changed forever and she made a promise to help.

This is what Katherine wrote in a journal entry on 6 May 2010: ‘When I first set out to create BLES in memory of Boon Lott, I was laughed at. People thought I was crazy and told me to my face that I would never be able to do it. Obviously my confidence was shattered, but my faith and determination to prove that one woman could make a big, positive, difference drove me onwards. If nothing else, I wanted the world to know about Boon Lott — the incredible, baby elephant who suffered, yet proved and taught me so many things about medicine, husbandry, and life. I didn’t want Boon Lott to end up being just another statistic — another baby elephant snatched from this life prematurely. Boon Lott deserved much more than that and I want to thank you, every single one of you, who is reading this right now, for believing in me and giving me the strength to create BLES in Boon Lott’s memory.’

Katherine and her team have certainly made a difference in the lives of these animals. If you love elephants, I urge you to find out more here.

Here are some more links for further reading:
Elephant Aid International
Carol Buckley
Elephant Asia Rescue and Survival Foundation

Here are some film projects also worth highlighting.
Timothy Gorski, How I Became and Elephant
Windy Borman, The Eyes of Thailand
Argofilms, The Story of Dao

Elephants are simply amazing creatures. One cannot help being awed in their presence. They are complex beings – intelligent, gentle and curious.

In Asia, there are many places to get close to elephants, some ethical and others less so. Although you might expect it to be easy, sometimes it’s hard to know the difference.

This is the first in a series of articles on what to look for if you want an up-close experience with an elephant – this one is dedicated to elephants on the streets.

If you see an elephant begging on the streets, please don’t buy food to feed him or her, take a photo or interact with him or her. Not only is it illegal in Thailand to buy food for and feed an elephant on the streets – with fines for you and the elephant’s mahout (human carer) – it’s a terrible and often abusive life for elephants.

In the busy tourist areas on the streets, it’s easy to see how out of place these elephants are. To start, elephants sway when walking and the often narrow footpaths can be treacherous. Elephants can bump into any number of objects, hot food pans on food carts is just one example. It’s dangerous both to both the elephants and the street vendors.

This baby elephant, pictured (courtesy of Associated Press) fell into a manhole in Rayong (about 150 kilometres south-east of Bangkok). With the help of a bulldozer, it took several hours to rescue this elephant and she survived. Sadly, it was reported that the elephant and her mahout later returned to begging on the streets.

Elephants are the largest living land mammal and require approximately 200 kilograms of fresh food and, in hot climates, up to 200 litres of clean water daily. Foods in such quantities are not naturally available in inner cities and, if they could be sourced, it’s unlikely a mahout living on the streets could afford them.

Not only is there a lack of food in the city, elephants can get sick from breathing exhaust fumes and drinking dirty water. They can suffer eye calluses and tuberculosis as well as leg and feet injuries.

As they often live on the outskirts of the city, they often have to walk to and from work on hot roads which is painful to their sensitive feet. They’re also frequent victims of vehicle accidents.

Elephants are sensitive creatures. As the Elephant Charter states, ‘elephants are unusually intelligent and perceptive; they exhibit the advanced traits of empathy, self-awareness and complex emotions, expressing an interest in their own lives and [in] the lives of those to whom they are attached’.

Imagine, then, the impact of loud noise and music and crowds of people night after night. Elephants forced to beg on the streets experience fear, stress, disorientation and beatings. They are also sometimes drugged. These factors can contribute to an elephant’s physical and/or mental breakdown. When this happens, elephants have been known to rampage in order to escape.

So debilitating is this life for elephants, the Elephant Nature Foundation claims that an elephant’s life expectancy is reduced by half when they are forced to live on the streets. This is beneficial to neither the elephant nor their mahout who relies on the elephant for their income.

Elephants and their mahouts who sell bags of sugarcane, pineapples and bananas to tourists also have to contend with drunk tourists, who can frighten elephants with erratic movements and unpleasant behaviour.

Despite all the evidence and the fact that in 2009 the Thai government banned elephants from city streets, some mahouts still bring their elephants to the city to beg.

To support the ban, the Thai Government funds programs such as the Chang Yim Project (Smiling Elephant Project) which was established in 2009 to buy elephants from their mahouts and relocate them to the National Elephant Institute in Lampang. Other organisations like the Elephant Nature Park and Boon Lott’s Elephant Sanctuary also do their best to intervene and provide funds for an elephants in need of rescue. There’s still a lot of work to do, however, and funds are sorely needed.

Not only are there organisations helping, but some individuals are too, like Jack, a young New Zealander who visited the Elephant Nature Park and made friends with an older elephant named Lily. Since his visit with his family, he’s been raising funds through Facebook to buy an elephant from the streets and relocate it to the Elephant Nature Park. If you want to find out more about Jack’s efforts, visit his ‘cause page’ on Facebook.

American artist, Connie English, is another individual helping who is about to embark on a community arts project in Thailand to assist Boon Lott’s Elephant Sanctuary build an elephant medical clinic. Click here for more information on Connie’s project.

If you know of any others that are helping, we’d love to hear about it.

So, if you see an elephant and their mahout begging in the street, you are encouraged to call the local police or an elephant care society – some of which are listed below.

If you want an up-close experience with an elephant, please resist the temptation on the streets, there are plenty of places in Thailand you can visit which use more humane practices with elephants. These experiences can be both humbling and breath-taking and we’ll discuss them in later articles this week.

Tomorrow’s article is on elephant entertainment.

Elephant Nature Foundation
Boon Lott’s Elephant Sanctuary
Elephant E-ctivism

Earlier this year, we were contacted by two animal activists regarding elephant welfare – after we’d published some stories on elephant sanctuaries in Asia.

Our Managing Director Lisa Louden had visited one elephant sanctuary in Laos and another in Thailand, and wrote about her experiences there. She went as a full-paying tourist to experience these magnificent animals up-close.

Both sanctuaries she visited claimed to be established from rescued elephants. In the majority of cases the elephants were bought from illegal loggers who overworked them or other abusive situations, and provided with a mahout (elephant carer). The money tourists pay to attend these camps goes towards running the organisation, paying the mahouts, feeding and caring for the elephants and towards funds to buy more elephants their freedom.

What she learnt and saw there and what she’s learnt on her return hasn’t always correlated.

With the help of the activists, Lisa (a former journalist) began researching elephant welfare in Asia. She discovered a great deal, but there’s still much more to be uncovered. So, in a series of articles running this week, Lisa will provide an overview of her research on the elephant tourism industry and provide tips on how to make informed decisions on how and where to interact with these beautiful creatures in Asia.

We’ll post this series on our website and on our Facebook page, and we welcome your comments and discussion, as well as any further information you can provide.

Giant George is one popular dog. The World’s Tallest Dog EVER, George – standing at nearly five feet and 111 kilograms – has more than 75,000 Facebook likes, his own website and is even on Twitter, although how he manages to text with those big paws, I have no idea!

There’s also Giant George the book, which if you’re a dog lover is a great read. I wasn’t so sure, however, at the start of the book when Dave Nasser, author and ‘dad’ of George began talking about the cost of George. There was, however, little to worry about as I settled into reading. Although George is a world star, as Dave and his wife Christie say, in their eyes, he’s just Georgie.

Giant George tells the story of this loveable dog and how he came to take the title for the Guinness World Record for the Tallest Dog in the World and the Tallest Dog Ever. It’s also the story of the trials and tribulations of dog ownership as well as the heady days of fame – particularly when Team Oprah get on board. (Yes, Oprah!) It’s surprisingly personal and funny, with a laugh out loud moment about George’s ‘lipstick’ – owners of male dogs will definately relate!

Find out more about George here

Eat, Spray, Love is the perfect take on the popular film and described as ‘one cat’s guide to self-discovery without leaving home’.

The author, Blossom the cat, is not only talented with a keyboard (obviously), she has some pearls of wisdom to share like “Even – especially – if you’re single, look after yourself and keep your claws sharp. That’s what the couch is there for”.

And “Learn the art of the ‘subtle nag’. Wait patiently until your flatmate’s nearly finished their meal and then stare suggestively at the plate until they think it’s their idea to share”.

There’s no doubt Blossom has shared her wisdom with dogs. Especially ones around this office.

Eat, Spray, Love is published by Random House and available at book stores – isn’t it nice when a publisher has a sense of humour!

There were early, indicative signs Lisa Louden’s life would involve helping animals – the strays she brought home, the decision of vegetarianism at the age of 13 and the fact that she was always grinning like an idiot when she was around them (she still does). It’s of no surprise then, she founded an animal charity, what is a surprise though, is its fresh approach and collaborative strategy, as Lisa explains.  

One of my biggest motivators to helping animals is the debt I feel towards them.  Many of my most centred moments of clarity and happiness occur when I’m with them in nature. These are what I call my ‘real’ moments – time spent completely in the moment without awareness that one hour, five hours or 30 minutes may have idly past. These moments also have another important element in that they leave an indelible impression about the innate nature of connection and I know I’m a better person for the experience.

Over the years, what I’ve learnt about preventing cruelty to animals is it’s not just discussing the obvious. It’s often about ‘hidden’ cruelty, like supporting industries and practices that thrive on cruelty to animals. One example is purchasing decisions. Buying ‘free range’ instead of ‘caged’ products is one example of supporting the betterment of animals, and often all it takes to switch is information.

Animal protection organisation, Animals Australia’s recent and most talked about radio campaign ‘Lucy Speaks’ centres around the commonly accepted fact that a pig has the intelligence of a three-year-old child (pigs are very family-orientated, intelligent and capable of feeling pain as humans do). This series of advertisements is told from the point of view of a three-year-old who is forced to endure a permanent prison (sow stall) without family contact or stimulation or room to move or turn around. The campaign has been hugely powerful because everyone knows that it’s immeasurably cruel to subject a child to this torture.

This radio campaign was a tipping point, raising awareness of the plight of caged pigs. With this raised awareness, pressure from consumers on food outlets to stock free range products grew so much, it’s now changing the Australian pig industry. Within weeks of the radio campaign, major supermarket chain Coles announced that their Coles brand pork would be ‘sow stall free’ by the end of 2014. Although there’s still a long way to go in this fight against cruelty, particularly in legislation, this is a significant win. It also shows how with information and education, consumers can shift from purchasing ignorance to purchasing power.

Of course, animal cruelty is not just about ignorance, it can also be about circumstance. If you and your family have been surviving on a dancing bear for income for generations, know no other way of living, have no other access to income and live in a poor country, then getting rid of the bear is not an option likely to be considered. In this case, overcoming cruelty is not just about education that it’s cruel (often this is not known, cruelty is not intended but also not considered in the everyday survival of life), but also about providing the means and resources to an alternative income. It’s also about making the protection of animals more important and more income-beneficial than exploitation of them. [Thanks to Kartick Satyanarayan and his fantastic SOS Wildlife Program - they have been doing exactly this. Click here to find out more]

In 2007, after founding and editing a national animal magazine for several years (that also left our shores for 12 countries overseas) it was time for a change. The magazine involved me in the animal industry and I was exposed to many points of view about animals and people’s interactions with them. From what I knew and what I learnt, I wanted to create an organisation that rationally and compassionately sought to educate, facilitate and strategically find positive solutions to animal cruelty and its associated industries. So, I founded the Adore Animals Foundation, now a registered Australian charity, with our main charter to foster positive relationships between humans and animals.

In facilitating successful partnerships, our charter is not to criticise, but to find a way to solutions that have win-win outcomes for people and animals. Take the meat producing industry, which we have just exampled. While I’m a vegetarian, my personal choice is that I won’t eat what I can’t kill (and I can’t kill). Regardless, eating meat is everyone’s individual choice, so my goal is not to influence people’s choice to eat meat (although that would be great), but to influence people’s purchasing choices to buy the most humane meat product available. Of course this is also about labelling, or as the case may be, lack of labelling, but that’s another topic.

One objection I hear to eating free range is that it’s too expensive. To this, I pose an alternative view: there is no higher price to pay than to give up your life to sustain others. That animal has died to feed you and your family. So the question to ask yourself then, is it worth a couple of extra dollars to ensure that the life that is sustaining you is given a good life while it lives? It’s about humanity – we can make a difference and we do everyday, whether it is positive or otherwise.

Being a volunteer organisation and a Foundation is challenging. For one thing, we all need to generate income outside of the organisation (mine in communications contracting) and then come home to hours of volunteer work. The other is that there are many organisations out there for the good of society, asking you to donate to their cause. So we have taken a different approach, one of sustainability and of social enterprise, which we hope eventually will also provide our incomes.

At the Adore Animals Foundation we aim to produce products and provide events that are commercially viable, the only difference is, our profits go to non-profit causes, rather than to the profits of a company or individual.

To that end, our first social enterprise product is a coffee-table book called Moments of Connection on the benefits that animals have on children. Based on research and amazing photography, it’s a reminder of the value of these interactions and what animals teach us (the research findings are phenomenal).

Moments of Connection was produced to fund animal-related projects in recovery and prevention in the Black Saturday bushfire area. Just as the people are still recovering, so are the animals and their habitats. Through researching the still very urgent needs of the area, our projects are designed to provide both short and long term benefits for the animals. As we facilitate relationships, we work directly with local animal groups to help recovery and strategically build on reducing future devastating impacts on animals from bushfires.

Moments of Connection is a win-win-win situation – you receive a book or provide a beautiful gift for someone, education is enclosed in the book and all the profits go to helping animals. Better still, we’re finding companies willing to support our ventures who also see the value in making a difference!

Photo: Lisa Louden and baby orangutan at the Orangutan Care Centre, on the outskirts of Pangkalan Bun, Borneo 

We’re currently researching cafés and restaurants in Australia that use free range products, like eggs and meats – such as chicken, pork or beef –  for an exciting new project .

So, if you have visited a café or restaurant that you know serves only free range products, then please tell us about them. Or if you own a café and restaurant that only uses free range, we want to hear from you.

Simply go to our contact us page and in the ‘message section’ tell us the café or restaurant name, its location and what was used. If you also know the source of the free range, then let us know that too. Or simply add a comment below (and tell others about it).

We as consumers choose cruelty free with our purchases which make a huge difference to the lives of animals. We want to make these free range cafés and restaurants easy to find.

Thanks for your help. And please, keep buying free range products.

Like all responsible citizens of the world – we do not recommend you try this at home with your dog.

Instead, perhaps try a new bubble bath mix!