How You Can Help
Our primary concern is keeping our precious elephants fed and healthy, and this is no small task. Elephants have HUGE appetites and naturally eat for 16-18 hours per day, consuming up to 10% of their body weight daily! For a 3-tonne elephant like Samran, that’s the equivalent of 200-250kg of food per day…!!
Please help support our beautiful elephants by purchasing a virtual food basket. Your generous and kind support is HUGELY appreciated.
Why Do We Need Your Urgent Help?
Having spent 2019 building our beautiful elephant sanctuary set on 30 rai of lush jungle on the west coast of Phuket, Thailand, we opened our doors to rave reviews at the beginning of 2020 before disaster struck almost immediately.
Open less than 2 months and barely breaking even to support our beautiful rescued elephants, the Covid-19 pandemic arrived in March and devastated our wonderful sanctuary.
All elephant parks and sanctuaries across Phuket (and elsewhere) were ordered to close immediately. Tourists fled back home, beaches closed, Phuket International Airport closed, the bridge connecting Phuket to the Phang-Nga mainland sealed, local districts placed in hard lock-down, a night-time curfew installed and road blocks set up.
Fast-forward to today, late May, and while the hard-lock down has been eased, there is still no light at the end of the tunnel. Our sanctuary is almost 100% reliant on international tourism to survive and the pain is real and getting stronger by the day. The Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand has banned international travel into Thailand until at least the end of June – it could be extended further.
Due to the economic situation, it will not be commercially viable to open the Phuket Nature Reserve Elephant Habitat until Phuket has fully opened up and tourists, primarily international, commence travelling back to Phuket in steady numbers.
At this stage, we are wishfully targeting an October potential re-opening date, but of course, the world is still flying blind into the Covid-19 storm, obtaining sufficient testing data and developing a reliable vaccine.
Meanwhile, bills still need to be paid, staff supported, and elephants need to be fed. We are struggling badly and the nightmare is getting worse as the cashflow runs dry.
Thank You
Thank you very much for reading and will gratefully thank you for your time and support. We very much look forward to receiving any feedback or comments and wish you and your loved ones and family peace, health, and happiness.
Stay Safe
The Phuket Nature Reserve Elephant Habitat Team
