3,000 Elephants Are Held In Captivity for Tourism in Asia! Here’s How You Can Help Them

Tourism has always been a booming industry, but with the major trend of travelers full of “wanderlust” for the perfect selfie with wild animals and Instagram posts of exotic lands, the tourism industry has never been more profitable. Knowing that wild animal attractions draw in large crowds and reap in huge profits, too many people exploit innocent animals and force them to interact with endless lines of tourists.

Wild cat petting attractions and elephant trekking excursions are particularly popular in Asian countries like Thailand and India. Seeing as wild animals are inherently wild and cannot be domesticated within their lifetime, these excursions pose dangerous, potentially fatal, threats to animals and humans alike.

In order to control elephants and make them submit to unnatural demands like carrying heavy loads of tourists on their backs, elephant handlers kidnap baby elephants from their mothers and keep them in barbaric restraints while torturing them with bull hooks. This “breaking in” process lasts for years, and many elephants do not survive it. Those that do survive live in misery in fear of humans.

According to a petition on Care2, there are 3,000 elephants in captivity for the tourism industry in South East Asia alone. If you hate to see these intelligent gentle giants exploited and abused in such brutal ways, please take a moment to sign the petition and make the pledge to never go elephant trekking or Support attractions that exploit elephants.

Many people are unaware of the truth behind elephant trekking, so PLEASE share this with your network to increase awareness for the cause!

Lead Image Source: Wikimedia Commons