The city of Bangkok has purchased a 30-year-old roving elephant off the streets as part of the capital’s new initiative called “Smiling Elephants.”
The partially blind female elephant named Pang Bua Kham was sold by her owner for the price of 300,000 baht, or US $8,790.
Initially the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) asked the Elephant Reintroduction Foundation to buy the elephant, but the foundation could not buy her. Pang Bua Kham is old and disabled. The Foundation knew that would make reentry into the wild difficult or unsafe for her.
The BMA was finally able to make the sale as a result of donations from the public since the program did not have sufficient funds. Pang Bua Kham will now be sent to the Elephant Conservation Centre in Lampang Province.
The objective of the “Smiling Elephants” project is to set free all the elephants who work on the streets of Bangkok.
1 USD=34.1297 THB
