Inspired by the death of her partner Ema McGeown, of Oamaru, a few years ago, Amber Hawkins is travelling to Thailand in August to help raise awareness about the darker side of the elephant tourism industry and help rehabilitate rescued elephants.
"I realised life was pretty short," she said.
She had always had an appreciation of the importance of animal welfare.
Her desire to help captive elephants was sparked when she saw an elephant which was part of a travelling circus chained up.
"It looked sad. I knew it was wrong. Things like that shouldn’t happen. Seeing that and how depressed it was — that’s not a life for an animal."
The elephant tourism industry was mostly divided into two groups — sanctuaries or elephant walking tours and circuses, Miss Hawkins said.
People might get sold a story that an elephant walking tour was ethical, but what many people didn’t understand was what elephants endured to perform that task.
"It causes long-term harm riding the elephants because their spines are not made to support the weight of humans."
Elephants were taken from their herds when they were young, isolated and beaten — basically anything that broke the animal down and subdued it, Miss Hawkins said.
The programme she would take part in was run by The Global Work and Travel Co and based in Thailand’s northern capital, Chiang Mai.
She believed she could be a part of positive change, but was seeking help to cover the course and contributions to the programme through crowdfunding platform
PledgeMe (her page is titled Elephant Conservation Project).
She saw the trip as an adventure, but also a way she and her supporters could help an animal.
There were only about 2000 elephants in the wild in Thailand, and she wanted to be part of a movement which boosted that number.
