Blogs

History of the Zoo! 

Zoos originated from menageries, an eclectic collection of mostly exotic animals often housed by powerful empires or people. These menageries symbolised wealth and power, as they often boasted large, dangerous and foreign creatures demonstrating a high degree of skill and capabilities needed for acquisition. These menageries evolved over time into the more contemporary zoos that we recognise today, after 17th century academics’ studies began to appreciate the nature...

In Karen hill-tribes, people have worked alongside elephants for thousands of years. Young male ‘mahouts’ (elephant keepers) will be partnered with an elephant and a bond will be created, limiting the dependence on tools for control. Over several years, a long-term relationship and mutual respect is established, where commands become the main form of control and interaction. In most cases a bullhook will still be carried for safety purposes, for both elephant and man. 

There has been a l...

In Spring 2018 we gave away a Spring Grant to a project working towards improving the welfare of elephants in Thailand. The grant was awarded to Elephant Valley Thailand (EVT) to study wild elephants.

EVT is a small boutique elephant sanctuary modelled on the Elephant Valley Project in Cambodia. They have 6 elephants and 15 hectares of land. Now that the elephants have been rehabilitated to a satisfactory degree, EVT are starting to work on their second Thai location to teach elephants...

Since our last update, we have been busy bees trying to get our beehive project at Kindred Spirit Elephant Sanctuary started.

In June last year, we visited Phu Luang Wildlife Sanctuary in Loei province where the DNP (Department of National Parks) have already set-up a beehive fence that they have opened to the public to teach about the fencing, and demonstrate how it all works. We asked a lot of questions and learned a lot from the team that day. They where very helpful and welcoming to...