It is estimated in 1900 there were 100,000 elephants in Thailand. Today their numbers have decreased to an estimated 3,000 domestic and 2,000 in the wild.
In Thailand, elephants traditionally worked with humans in the logging industry. In 1989, due to deforestation, devastating floods occurred across the country and as a result, the government officially banned logging activity. This was a good environmental decision, but posed major challenges to elephant owners needing to self-finance the upkeep of their hungry elephants needing a riverside home and to eat, ideally, a 10th of their body-weight each day, every single day.
