On the 3rd of January 2025, a Spanish tourist was killed by a captive elephant while she was bathing the animal at a so-called elephant “sanctuary” in Thailand. Blanca Ojanguren García was washing the elephant at the Koh Yao Elephant Care Centre when she was pushed by the animal and she fatally hit her head.
García, who was a law and international relations student at Spain’s University of Navarra, was living in Taiwan as part of a student exchange programme when she visited Thailand with her boyfriend. The female elephant, 45-year-old Phang Somboone, could have been stressed at the time by being forced to interact with tourists outside its natural habitat. Thai police have now charged the mahout in the care of the animal.
Bathing elephants is one of the animal activities tourists do in Thailand, which has about 3,000 captive elephants. The Koh Yao Centre offers “elephant care” packages which let tourists cook for, feed, bathe, and walk with the elephants. These activities disrupt natural grooming behaviours and expose the elephants to unnecessary stress.
World Animal Protection (WAP), an international animal welfare charity, has urged Thailand to stop breeding elephants in captivity and exploit them for the tourism industry. The charity claims that more than six in 10 elephants used for tourism in Asia are living in “severely inadequate” conditions. WAP said to the BBC, “These intelligent and socially intricate animals, with a capacity for complex thoughts and emotions, endure profound suffering in captivity, as their natural social structures cannot be replicated artificially.”
Not all the centres that call themselves sanctuaries are true sanctuaries for the animals, as many are disguised zoos or circuses of some sort that exploit captive animals for tourism.
Jason Baker, PETA senior vice president, said in a statement that “such incidents highlight the dangers to both humans and animals alike. Any ‘sanctuary’ that allows humans to touch, feed, bathe, or closely interact with elephants in any way is no place of refuge for elephants and puts the lives of tourists and animals in critical danger.”
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