How Tourism Can Support Asian Elephant Conservation

Tourism can influence the future of Asian elephants – either aiding their survival or worsening the threats they face – depending on how it occurs. The industry has great potential to improve the outlook for Asian elephants by addressing the root drivers of population decline. From generating funding for habitat conservation and rehabilitation efforts to reducing human-wildlife conflict and creating sustainable local livelihoods, responsible tourism can be a powerful tool for safeguarding these endangered animals. In this blog, we’ll explore the various ways tourism can contribute to the conservation of Asian elephants.

Funding Habitat Protection and Restoration 

As Asia continues to urbanize and experience economic growth, supporting wild Asian elephant conservation is critical to restoring populations of this endangered species. This involves protecting existing habitats through improved management practices and sustainable land-use planning, as well as restoring degraded areas and wildlife corridors to connect fragmented habitats.

Protected areas like national parks and wildlife reserves safeguard natural elephant habitats. These vast expanses of land provide a safe haven where elephants can roam freely and ensure access to the food, water, and shelter they need to thrive. However, maintaining these protected areas requires ongoing financial support for costs like rangers, monitoring technology, and signage. Unfortunately, many parks suffer from chronic underfunding, limiting their ability to defend ecosystems and wildlife against poaching, land encroachment, and illegal logging. 

A recent study revealed that more than half of protected areas in Southeast Asia have been unable to prevent deforestation, leading to the loss of nearly 180,000 acres (73,000 hectares) of forests. It’s estimated that at least $17 million is needed to improve their management and conservation.

Tourism to protected areas can help bridge this funding gap. The industry is the largest market-based contributor to finance protected areas. Revenue from visitor entrance fees, along with operating fees paid by travel companies offering services like tours and lodging, directly supports the protection and maintenance of these lands. This creates a safer habitat for the elephants that live within the parks. 

However, certain protected areas attract far more visitors than others. This places immense pressure on their sensitive ecosystems. For example, while two-thirds of tourists to Nepal visit the country’s protected areas, this visitation is concentrated in only 4 out of 20 parks. By visiting lesser-known protected areas, tourists can reduce the burden on high-traffic parks. 

In addition to visiting protected areas, travelers can further support the conservation of elephant habitats by purchasing carbon offsets or donating to other programs that protect and restore forests. Travel companies can facilitate this by contributing a percentage of their sales or integrating carbon offsets into their offerings to make trips carbon neutral. The potential for carbon offsets to protect ecosystems in Southeast Asia is substantial—estimates suggest they could generate $12 million of the $17 million needed to improve management in protected areas.

For instance, the Keo Seima carbon offset project protects a sanctuary in Cambodia that serves as a vital habitat for elephants and other endangered species. The revenue generated from carbon offsets supports the hiring and training of local rangers who patrol the sanctuary to prevent illegal logging, wildlife poaching, and land encroachment. Carbon offset projects may also restore degraded landscapes to improve their viability as habitats and support ecosystem recovery. By purchasing offsets from our Climate Impact Portfolio, you can contribute to projects like Keo Seima that help safeguard forests, promote biodiversity, and combat climate change.  

Incentivizing Community Conservation Through Economic Benefits 

Tourism can foster a better relationship between local communities and wild elephants by attaching economic value to conservation. Many rural communities living near elephant habitats are impoverished and struggle to meet basic needs. Without tourism benefits, they may view conservation efforts negatively because of restricted access to resources and property damage caused by wildlife. However, tourism has the potential to change this mindset by turning conservation into an economic opportunity rather than a burden.

Travelers visiting protected areas and elephant habitats bring revenue to rural communities. For instance, in Kui Buri National Park in Thailand, locals work as guides and drivers on elephant observation safaris, earning income that relies on healthy elephant populations. Ecotourism supports other local jobs in and around protected areas, such as park rangers, souvenir vendors, artisans, and lodge and restaurant staff. By providing tangible livelihood benefits, tourism gives local communities a vested interest in protecting wildlife and natural habitats. 

Maximizing residents’ access to tourism income is crucial to further strengthening the relationship between conservation and economic growth. Companies can support the economic ripple effect by hiring locally and sourcing goods and services from local suppliers. In Chitwan National Park in Nepal, it is estimated that if businesses sourced just 5% more of their goods locally, it would result in a USD 3 million increase in local incomes. Travelers can also contribute by booking with companies that prioritize local employees, fair trade, and community linkages.

Tourism revenue can help offset the economic losses that local communities experience due to destruction caused by elephants or other wildlife. Around Chitwan National Park, wildlife incursions result in crop losses valued at approximately USD 2.9 million annually. However, the local economy benefits far more from tourism, with tourism revenue estimated at USD 43.4 million each year. Notably, 30-50% of park revenue is channeled back to buffer zone communities, helping them manage the impacts of human-wildlife conflict and fund other community needs.

Some elephant tourism operations also use visitor revenue to compensate for damages caused by elephant herds. Fair compensation prevents locals from retaliating against elephants when they accidentally crush crops, vehicles, or other property. For example, the Elephant Valley Project in Cambodia’s Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary uses funds from tourist entrance fees to compensate locals for elephants’ damage to their crops.

Creating Alternative Livelihoods to Ecosystem Destruction 

In many rural communities, people rely on resource-based industries such as logging, mining, and agriculture to make a living. While these activities provide immediate income, they often result in environmental degradation when sustainable and regenerative practices are not employed. Over time, extraction and deforestation lead to resource depletion, biodiversity loss, and economic hardship. 

Tourism offers a sustainable alternative by creating jobs that do not rely on resource extraction. Instead of exploiting natural resources, communities can earn livelihoods through eco-friendly tourism. For example, the Jahoo Gibbon Camp in Cambodia employs Indigenous Bunong people who traditionally relied on sustainable resource use but had recently turned to illegal logging and hunting for income. The camp employs locals as guides, cooks, and hospitality staff, providing them with a sustainable income that reduces the need for destructive activities.

In addition to directly creating jobs, tourism can also facilitate livelihood transitions by supporting carbon offset projects. These projects often offer training and employment in sustainable agriculture, handicrafts, and ecotourism, helping communities shift from resource extraction to more sustainable livelihoods. Carbon offset projects also address poverty – a key driver of deforestation – in other ways, such as providing funding for improved healthcare, sanitation, and education. Carbon offset initiatives offer long-term economic solutions that empower communities and protect the environment.

Advancing Scientific Research to Inform Conservation Efforts

Elephants in tourism venues can also support scientific research, which helps scientists better understand wild populations’ behaviors and social structures. These studies can contribute to the creation of more behavior-informed policies that reduce the likelihood of human-elephant conflict. 

In the unlikely event that elephants in captivity experience an outbreak of disease, treating them may also help wildlife veterinarians more effectively prevent the spread of similar illnesses in the wild. At the National Zoo in Washington D.C., the laboratory developed a therapy for a common elephant herpes virus that can reduce symptoms by 40%. This disease impacts captive and wild elephants and can be passed to humans. Over 10 years of continued research have contributed to improved treatments that have been applied to captive and wild elephant herds to prevent symptoms and further spread of this deadly disease.

Tourism companies can also contribute to wild elephant conservation by supporting scientific research beyond their facilities. Donations to reputable environmental and animal welfare organizations can fund essential efforts like elephant population monitoring, human-elephant conflict management, and anti-poaching efforts.

For example, Humane Society International (HSI) is monitoring endangered elephants in Vietnam using camera traps. The data gathered helps identify and track individual elephants, which plays a key role in turning human-elephant conflict into human-elephant coexistence. In India, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is fitting GPS collars on wild elephants to track their whereabouts and movement patterns. The real-time data collected helps identify critical habitats and resource availability, allowing WWF to pinpoint important areas that require improved conservation and restoration and implement preventive measures, such as reinforcing barriers around human settlements and agricultural fields.

Preparing Elephants for Reintroduction to the Wild

In addition to supporting research and conservation, some elephant tourism venues care for captive elephants while they are trained in essential life skills with the intention of reintroducing them into the wild. According to the IUCN Asian Elephant Specialist Group, reintroducing captive Asian elephants to the wild may help restore depleted populations where natural habitat exists and augment genetic biodiversity. However, this process requires careful management over time to maximize the chances of success. Certain types of elephants are more suitable for reintroduction, with rehabilitated calves and those who have experience foraging in the forest being more likely to survive in the wild. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has released a set of guidelines to ensure that captive elephants have a successful transition into the wild.

It often takes years of skill-building and community readiness training to fully prepare a group of elephants for transition into the wild. Elephants are gradually transitioned into more wild-looking enclosures, learning skills like foraging in controlled environments under staff supervision before they are released into the wild. Once released, staff closely observe their interactions with wild herds to ensure that new elephants are good social fits. This process can be time-consuming and incredibly expensive to complete, with tourist dollars used as a way to finance some of these programs. In Thailand, 108 elephants have been introduced into the wild thanks to rehabilitation efforts. In Sri Lanka, a single tourism facility has released 117 elephant calves to the wild, 17 of which have given birth to calves of their own. Programs like these promote the long-term survival of wild elephant populations by adding a steady stream of genetically unique individuals. As habitat and elephant populations dwindle, these reintroduction efforts will only become more crucial to conservation.

Providing Lifetime Care for Sick or Non-Releasable Animals

For certain elephants, reintroduction to the wild is simply not an option. Elephants with severe illness or injuries, elderly individuals, or those who have spent a long time depending on human care often lack the skills to survive in the wild. Ethical elephant rescues and sanctuaries provide lifetime care for these animals, using visitor revenues to cover the costs of food, medicine, and veterinary care. 

One such sanctuary and rescue center is Elephant Nature Park, located near Chiang Mai, Thailand. Animal rights advocator and entrepreneur Sangduen “Lek” Chailert founded the park with the goal of rescuing and rehabilitating elephants that have been mistreated in logging, unethical elephant camps, and street begging. The sanctuary provides a safe place for elephants to live out the remainder of their lives, engaging in their natural behavior. “When we rescue them here, we introduce them to meet with the herd because that is natural for the elephant. They are social animals. They enjoy their herd. They look after each other and stay as a family. They form strong bonds, protect, and take care of each other.” said Chailert.

Today, more than 100 elephants freely roam the 300 acres (120 hectares) of rolling hills, forests, rivers, and open grasslands at Elephant Nature Park. The facility relies on visitor income to care for the resident elephants and support advocacy efforts for better animal welfare practices across Thailand. Without income from tourism, many sanctuaries would be unable to provide adequate food and water for their elephants, placing them in precarious situations. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a lack of tourist funds left many elephants starving in facilities that were unable to afford their intensive care. The pandemic showed that visiting these captive elephant facilities can be crucial to the health and well-being of animals that are unable to survive in the wild. It also highlighted the need to diversify income streams beyond visitor fees. During the tourism shutdown, donations and carbon offset revenues from the Keo Seima project became a lifeline for the Elephant Valley Project. Tourism companies can further support sanctuaries by donating funds and supplies, sponsoring elephants, or purchasing carbon offsets from associated projects

Implementing Eco-Friendly Building and Design Principles

As development speeds up across Asia, the tourism industry can help protect elephant habitats by adopting eco-friendly practices that reduce new buildings’ impact on the environment. Even something as simple as a new roadway can significantly impact the forest. Developing in a sustainable way prevents widespread impacts like deforestation and fragmentation of elephant habitat. “Instead of seeing people and elephants in separate silos, what we need is inclusive development and conflict solutions that focus on creating harmonious co-existence between humans and wildlife,” said Sumanth Bindumadhav, Director of Wildlife Protection at HSI – India.

Destination managers should prioritize sustainable land use planning to avoid rapid habitat destruction from tourism infrastructure, such as ensuring construction does not disrupt critical migration corridors or water sources that elephants depend on. By conducting thorough environmental impact assessments and carefully zoning tourism areas, destination managers can minimize habitat fragmentation, preserve natural wildlife movement, and reduce the risk of human-wildlife conflict.

In addition to destination-level oversight, hotel developers and other tourism companies can take measures to protect elephant habitats when constructing and furnishing their facilities. One fundamental approach is using sustainable building materials like bamboo or reclaimed wood that reduce the need to chop down forests. Also, furniture and decor should be ethically sourced to reduce the demand for illegal logging. Energy-efficient design features and on-site renewable energy generation systems, such as solar panels, can be incorporated to minimize the need for intrusive infrastructure like power lines. Developers can look to environmental certifications like LEED as a framework to minimize their buildings’ ecological impact. 

Tourism facilities can also take several steps to reduce their physical footprint while preserving the natural habitats around them. One effective strategy is to elevate structures, such as treehouses or stilted lodges, which minimizes disruption to the landscape and allows animals to continue using the area without obstruction. Additionally, developers can establish buffer zones or sponsor protected areas around their properties. By preserving green space, they can prevent habitat encroachment by other developers and ensure elephants can move freely between feeding and breeding areas. 

Visitors can reinforce the demand for sustainable buildings through their purchasing decisions. By prioritizing eco-friendly accommodations that actively demonstrate a commitment to sustainability, travelers can encourage more tourism businesses to adopt these practices.

Engaging in Ethical Elephant Tourism

Visits to elephant tourism venues or protected areas can support wild elephant conservation or captive elephant care, helping preserve the species for generations. However, when not managed ethically, elephant tourism can have the opposite effect, encouraging the capture of wild elephants and leading to animal welfare issues. Elephants in unethical tourism venues may endure poor living conditions, insufficient medical care, and mistreatment that leads to physical and emotional suffering. “Unfortunately, there are a few rescue centers across Asia that masquerade as sanctuaries, so tourists need to watch out for the red flags and avoid any that involves these,” said Audrey Delsink, Director of Wildlife at HSI – Africa. Sustainability concerns even arise in wild elephant tourism, as irresponsible interactions and poorly managed visitation can cause stress and disrupt natural behaviors. 

Before participating in any form of elephant tourism, it is essential to do your research to ensure your visit helps rather than harms wild or captive elephants. “As individuals, we all have the power to change these cruel practices,” said Delsink. Finding a truly ethical experience can be challenging, and there are a number of questions to ask. Download this handy checklist and check out our next blog for tips and guidance on how to find an ethical elephant tourism experience.

In addition to individual responsibility, providers also play a part in ensuring ethical elephant tourism. Tour operators and travel agencies should carefully vet the experiences they offer, choosing venues that prioritize elephant welfare. This begins by educating employees about the importance of ethical treatment and best practices, giving them the know-how to identify responsible experiences. As Paul Pruangkarn, The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA)’s Chief of Staff emphasized, education around ethical elephant tourism shouldn’t be confined to a sustainability team—it’s important for all employees to be informed. “It’s everybody’s job. It’s not just one department’s job,” he stated. By ensuring that all staff members understand the issues and solutions, companies can empower their teams to educate travelers and contribute to creating more responsible tourism practices.

Raising Environmental Awareness and Appreciation

Elephant tourism can be a powerful tool for raising awareness of environmental and animal welfare issues, turning visitors and locals into advocates for better living conditions and conservation efforts. Whether it be a wild elephant-watching company or a captive elephant facility, all elephant tourism operations have the ability to educate and inspire a deep appreciation for elephants.

Around Kui Buri National Park, WWF trains surrounding community members to become tour guides and educates them about elephants’ ecological importance that they can, in turn, share with guests. This helps locals become conservation stewards when chatting with their guests and also within their communities. WWF’s Asian Species Expert, Nilanga Jayasinghe, mentioned that guiding within the national park helps community members “develop a sense of ownership of their natural resources, including the elephants in the area, and have pride in their natural resources and the elephants.” This sense of pride is contagious, inspiring the visitors they lead through the park to become voices for conservation.

Jayasinghe explains that the tourist experience can actually contribute to more action in favor of conservation. She states that observing elephants from a safe distance in their natural habitat “creates a different kind of love among people to want to do more to protect them.” She believes that an impactful elephant observation experience, when combined with an educational component, can be a powerful call to action for many animal lovers. After experiences like these, many tourists want to advocate for elephant conservation, either through activism or by supporting conservation initiatives.

Tourism offers a unique opportunity for visitors and locals alike to witness ethical elephant tourism, helping shift mindsets toward more sustainable practices. Some elephant camps are transitioning to more ethical models, thanks to increased awareness and the help of tourist dollars. Chailert has been a driving force behind these transition efforts in Thailand. She invites camp owners to Elephant Nature Park, showcasing ethical tourism in action and helping them see the long-term value of adopting humane practices. As consumer demand continues to shift, she explains ethical facilities tend to be more profitable. “When they sell elephant riding, they make about $20 per hour. But if they sell the ethical tour for three hours they make like $100 per customer,” she explained. “They don’t disturb so much, and they make way more money.” 

Although the end result is profitable, the transition process is often costly. Tourists who visit Elephant Nature Park are encouraged to extend their trip by visiting a nearby camp that is transitioning, contributing much-needed funds to the camp as they adopt more elephant-friendly practices. Chailert realizes that change often starts by educating the next generation, therefore the park serves as an immersive classroom, welcoming local students. “We believe they are the seed, and they can, one day, go back and tell their villages to change their practices.” 

It’s important to recognize that meaningful changes in mindsets and behavior take time and don’t happen overnight. As Pruangkarn aptly stated, “Change is not a sprint. It’s a marathon and there are steps being taken. And that’s the best part – whether they’re small steps or big steps, at least there are steps being taken.” 

This reminder serves as a call to action for travelers, tourism companies, and communities to continue learning and supporting one another on this journey. Every step—no matter how small—moves the industry closer to a more sustainable future. The more you understand about the species, the threats these animals face, and what ethical elephant tourism means, the more likely you are to support the conservation and well-being of this incredible species. Elephant resources we love include WWF Elly Allies, Smithsonian, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services. For practical guidance, check out our elephant tourism do’s and don’ts list and blog article to help you plan a memorable and ethical elephant tourism experience.