Tag / activism

Episode 10 of The Eco Tourist, my web series documenting a 3 week volunteer conservation trip to Thailand where my travel partner and I work with the endangered Asian elephant.

Told from the perspective of two Hollywood-based high raw vegans working in the film/television industry, in this tenth episode, you’ll see some very healthy and hilarious behaviors of Asian elephants. If the zoo, circus, sanctuary or trekking camp you are considering attending does not provide the opportunity for their elephants to exhibit these natural instincts, then find another. Find a true sanctuary where the elephants are free to:

1. scratch all day! 2. rumble, trumpet, squawk and communicate with other elephants 3. dust themselves with loose dirt 4. forage for wild plant food 5. roll in mud pits! 6. touch constantly and socialize with other elephants continually 7. raise the youngsters with familial discipline 8. be free from poking, stabbing and beating with the bull hook

These elephants at the Elephant Nature Park in Thailand (a real elephant sanctuary) are free to exhibit all these natural behaviors and are obviously healthy elephants.  Just take a look:

Read about the difference between most circus, zoo and trekking elephants vs. HEALTHY elephants in sanctuaries in my award-winning column, Clean and Green Every Day, in EcoHearth online magazine here: Circus Elephants Life and Exposing Cole Bros Circus Elephant Cover Up.

I thought I had happily escaped the holiday madness by visiting a Buddhist country during the season in question.  Little did I suspect the Elephant Nature Park had a very unexpected event planned for the park volunteers:

Christmas party at Elephant Nature Park, Thaland

The volunteers of Elephant Nature Park, Thailand

Mae Lana, the rescued elephant

Read why I try to get away from the US during the holidays here: “Christmas Is Trying To Kill Me“

See more photos from this volunteer trip to Elephant Nature Park, Thailand.

Sometimes people ask me if it can be done. If one can actually be a professional athlete on a plant based diet.  The truth is, I can’t imagine how one could on any other diet.  I imagine bogging my system down with slow digesting animal products or lifeless over cooked foods and I think to myself how much my performance would suffer.  In fact, if I eat a cooked vegan meal or two on a weekend, my balance is off in my yoga class on Monday and I’m just kinda tired in general until my body finishes digesting the heavy meal.  I THRIVE as a vegetarian (vegan/raw food) professional dancer and danger artist and consider it the OPTIMAL lifestyle because I am serious about my physicality and physique.

I get asked that question all the time.  But rarely do I get asked the question this tv segment asked me.  Supreme Master TV‘s “Vegetarian Elite” series profiled me as, well, an elite vegetarian (wow!) and asked me some pretty thought provoking questions on spirituality and art.  And my favorite was a question I’ve never been asked before:  does the raw vegan diet make me a better actor?  Watch our segment to see my surprised, impromptu answer:

Episode 6 of The Eco Tourist web series is LIVE! I never thought I’d be called to protest – I mean; rally – in Thailand, but as I mentioned in episode 5, to save an endangered species, you have to address the social, cultural, environmental AND political issues as well. We’ll here’s my chance to walk my talk!

This rally at the Governor’s Mansion in Chiang Mai, Thailand was a quite unexpected opportunity that presented itself during my volunteer position at the Elephant Nature Park. With support from international protesters, this video is in multiple languages, including Dutch, Israeli, Mandarine, French, Thai, Finnish and Scottish (which SOUNDS like another language, that’s for sure!). Enjoy episode 6 of The Eco Tourist:

Last week in Circus Elephants, Part 1: Seeing With Newly Informed Eyes, I shared how hard I had tried to be a dutiful journalist and nab opposing viewpoints on elephants in circuses, only to be shut down suddenly, have interviewees drop out at the last minute and even be called horrible names entirely unprovoked—all for asking informed questions. I then teamed up with another writer (referenced below as Unnamed Journalist) who had created his own journalistic opportunities on the same controversial elephants-in-circuses story and got to sit in on a slew of email conversations that, when all the chitchat is edited out, is unintentionally revealing. Read more …

After the first time I volunteered over in Thailand with those magistrates of evolution, the Asian elephant (specifically with her daughters, their aunties and the oldest bull), I came back home to the United States with newly informed eyes.

Not much had changed here, but things looked very different to me. For one thing, I saw animals in cages everywhere I turned. Read more…

You love elephants! And because you do, you know that riding one, buying a painting made by one, feeding a begging one on the city streets or watching one stand on its head is not part of a humane, eco-friendly travel itinerary (see my article: Eco-Adventure Travel: Seven Reasons Never to Ride an Elephant). Fortunately, there are several alternatives that offer an even deeper, closer and more personal connection to your beloved species. For example, why ride an elephant when you can bathe with one?

Here are some non-detrimental ways to commune with the elephant species: Read more …

So you love elephants. And you want nothing more than to ride on the back of one of these magnificent creatures through the jungles of Thailand, India or Sri Lanka on your next vacation. But did you know that that simple ride (or the purchase of an elephant painting or attending an elephant performance) contributes to the abuse and endangerment of the Asian elephant species? No tourists want to think they are harming the species they admire. Before you book that trekking package in Thailand—or anywhere—consider the bigger picture: Read more …

It’s not easy being green. Conservation groups and animal activists give generously of their time, money and life-force to protect endandered species, voiceless animals and natural habitat. To meet resistance from corporations bent on destruction-for-profit seems almost predictable, but the government has sided with the corporations, it seems, and passed laws to make “doing the right thing” an imprisonable crime. Who did the FBI cite as the “number-one domestic terrorism threat in the US”? You’d be forgiven if you answered assassins who target abortion doctors or militia groups planting bombs in government buildings. Nope, the answer is animal-rights groups who have never harmed a human nor animal. Read more…

At a certain point, parents have lived so many years on this Earth that there is no possession imaginable they might still need. This is a daughter’s authentic, if not childish, perception of her father, at least. Wanting terribly to impress dad with a grand display of Father’s Day gifting that says, “You’re my favorite dad! (I’m your favorite daughter, too, right?)”, visions of a garage full of tools, a basement packed with memorabilia, closets stuffed with clothing, shelves hosting knickknacks-a-plenty ultimately thwart the urge. Maybe, it seems to the daughter, there comes a time when parents just don’t need more stuff. Read more…