Bring The Elephant Home

4,000 trees planted at the new land and 2,000 in the ENP

Photo’s by Nitchanan Onkate.

Last two weekends we organized two tree planting events to create more natural habitat for the elephants of the Elephant Nature Park.

During the event ‘Let’s create an elephant jungle together’ on Saturday the 3rd of July we managed to get almost 4,000 trees planted on the new land of the Elephant Nature Park. Driving to the planting site in the heavy rain with so many volunteers was quite an adventure! We arrived at the planting site right after the rain stopped, so we could start planting in a perfect climate. We had almost 100 volunteers participating: the Elephant Nature Park volunteers, old and new BTEH volunteers living in Chiang Mai and 38 young students from the Star Fish school in Mae Tang. Because the land was prepared already, we could get lots of trees planted in a short time. While carrying and planting trees, the teachers of the Star Fish school explained to the children how much work it is to plant a tree, how long it takes to grow and how easy it is to destroy. They became aware that they should never destroy something important and beautiful like this. And the kids were totally into tree planting, they worked hard and enjoyed the event a lot!

After the hard work we took all the tree planters to the Elephant Nature Park to see for who we are creating this elephant jungle. Especially for the children of the Star Fish school this was an amazing experience. They couldn’t stop asking questions and were super exited to feed the elephants. many of them asked if they could come back to plant more trees and feed the elephants again. Sure they can! We need them to take care of the elephants and the trees, because they are the future.

The Elephant Nature Park took the rest of the seedlings to the Park, because the road is too rough to get more volunteers to the new land during rainy season. Because we need to plant the rest of the trees as soon as possible, we immediately organized the second tree planting event: last Sunday 35 students from the faculty of agriculture of the Rajabhat University came to help us. At two sites within the Elephant Nature Park we managed to get another 2,000 trees planted. That means the tree nursery of the Elephant Nature Park is almost empty, and the park is becoming more green during every rainy day.

Thank you all volunteers for realizing this dream and restoring the forest with us! Click more for information and more pictures of the event.

Last year the Elephant Nature Park was able to buy a new piece of land. The property is about 100 acres, surrounded by protected forests, and has some streams running through it. When we bought it, the land was mainly used for cabbage plantations. These plantations are gone now, so many hands are needed to restore the forest and to make this an elephant’s paradise!

The coming five years we have to plant many trees that will attract birds and other wild animals. This way the natural seed distributors will automatically visit our land from the neighboring forests, and plant more trees for us.

As soon as the forest returns, the Elephant Nature Park wants to use the land as a second elephant heaven. Some elephants from the park will live there in freedom, without much interaction with people. Volunteers can observe the elephants from some tree houses, that will be build in the future. At the moment there are no elephants on the land yet.

Tree planting event nr 1:

Location: New land of Elephant Nature Park, Mae Tang, Chiang Mai

July 3, 2010