Elephant rescue mission gaining ground
An elephant from Phuket is at the top of Jack Lanting’s rescue list.
Every day, shackled by chains, Gow is forced to carry people in the heat. Years of this treatment has caused her to adopt a heavy sway but Gow won’t have to live like this for much longer.
Gow is the first elephant Jack plans to save when he opens his $1.8 million elephant sanctuary in Thailand next year.
‘‘She is number one,’’ Jack said. ‘‘I’ve promised her we are going to rescue her one day.’’
Jack’s mum, Viv Lanting, said there were a lot of elephants that needed help but with Gow there was a special connection. ‘‘With her, we go up and just touch her trunk to show her love, because she sways so heavily. Normally that would actually stop them from swaying but we have only been able to halve it with her.’’
Jack was 8 when he went to Thailand for the first time.
He is now 16 and has been back to Thailand nine more times, has saved two elephants and helped rescue three others.
He is a year 12 student at St John’s College in Hamilton and at the end of the year he plans to leave school and open his own elephant sanctuary.
The sanctuary will be named Kwan Jai, after the first elephant Jack raised funds to rescue.
A location is yet to be confirmed but Jack has been looking at areas in central Thailand.
All going to plan, building will start in June or July next year.
‘‘Wherever we go, it’s got to be huge. We’ve been looking at 2000 acres or bigger,’’ Jack said.
‘‘We need something with a river and we’re hoping to find something that’s between the river and national park, so that we can create a green corridor for the wild elephants to walk between.
‘‘It’s not just a sanctuary, it’s a conservation project that’s concerned with permaculture and reforestation,’’ Jack said.
Jack has already been promised his first elephant for the sanctuary – Sook Sai, an elephant he helped rescue in 2015.
Sook Sai now lives at Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai province, northern Thailand, an elephant rescue and rehabilitation centre founded by Thai woman Lek Chailert.
Jack first knew he wanted to start his own sanctuary after an undercover mission six years ago. ‘‘We saw this one elephant, Lily. ‘‘She was on the beach and she had her name etched into her skin, on her forehead, with sharpened sticks. She and her mahout were high. She was 3 and she should have been a lot more boisterous than what she was, but she was just standing there because of the drugs she’d been given.’’
Jack launches his fund-raising scheme today and hopes to raise $1.8m through his website and grants.