Elephant Policy


Blugecko are an elephant friendly tour agency

“we aim to offer only positive experiences with well cared for elephants”

elephant friendly Tour operator Blugecko will not sell any trip which includes elephant riding (please see below for exceptions) and elephant shows. Training to prepare elephants for riding and to perform in shows is very harsh and starts from a young age and in many training programmes extremely cruel. Continued control and direction of the of the elephant often requires further poking and prodding with sharp hooks to control them in these activities. Blugecko avoid the selling of any trips which involve such methods. Riding can also cause a harsh physical toll on the elephants, elephants working for elephant camps and trekking operators work their elephants for many hours per day. Tourism is on the increase and unfortunatley demand for the riding of elephants is going up leading to many suffering overworked elephants.

We do not have a perfect knowledge of the workings of every organisation which uses elephants especially concerning the training methods used and the continued welfare of the elephant (as there are very much different degrees of how well the elephants are cared for) however we do our best to gauge whether the elephants are well cared for and we do hope to be able to offer you elephant activities where the standard of elephant care is well above the norm. We also rely on to some degree what our customers say. If you have booked a trip through us which involves elephants you will get the chance to fill out our feedback form. Please let us know what you thought about the elephant welfare standards. We read every form and use this information to help us choose only those elephant activities which are offering a good standard of elephant welfare.

Some of companies we work with allow a limited amount of bare back riding of elephants. Where this is the case we will state this in the tour description.