Elephant Welfare

Elephant Welfare Initiative

Elephants in captivity are an ethical concern in the tourism industry. Rapid growth in tourism, coupled with inadequate regulations, has encouraged poor treatment and practices that threaten the survival of these amazing, wild creatures.

PATA and the Asian Captive Elephant Working Group (ACEWG), have initiated a process to establish a widely supported set of standards and criteria as a guideline and reference for elephant camps.

This benchmark takes into account international standards including the ABTA animal welfare guidance and the Asian Captive Elephant Working Group (ACEWG) principles. In addition, many elephant experts have commented on the standard in their individual capacity. Based on a careful process, a final draft of the standard was agreed on in 2017. The standard includes more than 160 criteria, divided over 7 themes and 24 subthemes, and provides detailed guidance for the mahout as well as the elephant camps and the external assessors themselves.

What does this mean for you?

Easia Travel is one of the DMCs supporting the Elephant Welfare Initiative and we actively use the criteria and knowledge provided by it to monitor and assess elephant experiences in our destinations.

When you travel with Easia Travel, you can be entirely assured that any elephant experience you may have is held to the highest of international standards and practices. In this way, we believe we are contributing to the protection and preservation of elephants in Asia.