Yesterday we said goodbye to Rung Thip. The 57-year-old lady passed away peacefully during the night on Wednesday the 16th of August 2017. She left us unexpectedly after being a little under the weather over the past few weeks.
Rung Thip has been with us since May 2015 and gave a lot of happiness to our staff and to so many volunteers who had the chance to meet and care for her. We will miss her tortoise way of walking, her “don’t touch my head but please wash and scratch my back with that brush”, and her way of expressing the fact that the banana tree salad was given her to slowly, and so many other little things that made her special. She enjoyed a well deserved retirement at the WFFT Elephant Refuge, enjoying some freedom at the end of her long life of being used and abused in the tourism industry.
She worked at tourist camps for the last 25 years and she had done so with severe arthritis (her both front leg in constant pain). It took months of negotiating with her owners to have her retired at our centre to give her back her dignity. Thanks to our generous sponsors in Sydney, Australia we were able to do this. She enjoyed her retirment with other elephants, walking in grass fields and forests, scratching on her favorite trees, bathing in lakes, and she did it with dignity and respect.
See her rescue story here www.thaielephantrefuge.org/rescue-rung-thip-elephant/
Sadly, there are still so many other elephants in need of help – we will continue our work campaigning against unethical elephant tourism and the exploitation of your cousins both in the wild and in captivity!
Rest in Peace old girl. We will not forget you.
