Tag / animals

In episode 9 of The Eco Tourist, my very home-shot/edited series documenting a 3 week volunteer conservation trip to Thailand where my travel partner and I work with the endangered Asian elephant, we check out what other conservation initiatives, besides endangered species rescue, the Elephant Nature Park takes to protect the environment, culture and species.  Told from the perspective of two Hollywood-based high raw vegans working in the film/television industry, please enjoy my self-produced web series, The Eco Tourist, episode 9.

Read about some of the other rescues at the Elephant Nature Park, Thailand here.

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.

It doesn’t take a cast of thousands or a studio budget to produce media anymore. As soon as I switched to a Mac computer, I became a media mogul. I joke to myself sometimes that “I was born content”—in other words, I was born with an adventurous spirit, a desire to communicate and the talent to entertain. With such user-friendly creative tools on the computer nowadays, nothing holds me back from sharing the entertaining and hopefully thought-provoking content that is my life.  Read more …

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…

In episode 4 of The Eco Tourist, my travel partner and I arrive at The Elephant Nature Park, where we will volunteer with this endangered species. But on our arrival day, a special treat – we get close to a baby elephant.

Read 6 Ways To Drop Tourism and Really Travel in my award-winning column in EcoHearth magazine: Lodge Locally, Public Transit, Seek Out The Cultural and Natural.

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…