Baby Elephant Smuggling Exposed

Recent video has captured the dreadful treatment of captured endangered Asian elephants as a result of cross-border capture and trafficking in the animals. The Ecologist Film Unit in association with Earth Focus/Link TV and Elephant Family shows the inhumane practices involved in capturing the baby pachyderms, often by killing their mothers and others of the herd, and the brutal breaking in of baby elephants before they are sold into animal slavery.

LinkTV / Via linktv.org

Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people.

Alexander von Humbold

Try to avoid supporting tourism that uses elephants to perform circus tricks. These outfits almost always chain their elephants up all day separated from one another.

Brent Lewin / Redux Pictures / Via blog.nationmultimedia.com

A baby elephant braces for a hit during a training session in a Karen village in Burma.

The training session is coined the 'crush' as its goal is to break the elephant's spirit.

Wild elephants are typically tied up and beaten for 3 days straight and left to starve.

Burmese Karen mahouts near the Thai border operate a clandestine and illegal trade network smuggling elephants into Thailand to be sold to mahouts for the Thai tourism industry.

Officials estimate that 1 Burmese elephant is smuggled into Thailand every week.