Elephant Reintroduction Foundation

Description

The Elephant Reintroduction Foundation is a Thai non-profit conservation organization dedicated to returning captive elephants to their natural habitat. It is based in Bangkok, Thailand. It was founded in 1996 on the initiative of Queen Sirikit of Thailand. Between 1998 and 2012 the foundation acquired and released 84 elephants back into the wild.

Asian elephants are listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of threatened species. Thailand has an estimated 2,800 domesticated elephants, kept in zoos and conservatories or employed in logging and tourism, more than its roughly 2,000 wild elephants. In Bangkok, dozens of domesticated elephants are used by mahouts to solicit food and money from passers-by.

The foundation works to address this imbalance by acquiring elephants from captivity and reintroducing them to the wild. Its work aims to rebuild Thailand’s wild elephant population while reducing the number of captive elephants kept for tourism, logging and street begging in cities such as Bangkok.