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Manifa Elephant Camp’s 6 Key Concepts

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Living Landscapes

Place as Partner in Elephant–Human Relationships

At Manifa Elephant Camp, the forest is not a setting—it is a collaborator, a teacher, and a source of life. Nestled along the Mekong River and stretching across more than 100 hectares, our landscape is not simply where care happens, but how care happens. The land shapes the rhythms of elephant life and offers the conditions for healthy, multispecies coexistence.

For elephants, access to varied terrain is essential. Here, they forage on native vegetation, explore wooded hillsides, bathe in the river, and rest under canopy trees. These activities are not just “natural behaviors” in the abstract; they are daily practices that maintain physical health, mental stimulation, and social well-being. A living, diverse habitat supports digestion, mobility, and emotional balance. Unlike confined enclosures or fully managed zoos, our forest allows elephants to retain autonomy over their movement and choices.

But this landscape also sustains cultural life. For generations, the forests of Laos have been places of both livelihood and reverence. Forest spirits are respected; trees are valued not only for timber, but for their presence. Mahouts and elephants, in their traditional work, moved with the seasons and the terrain, adapting to cycles of rain, growth, and renewal. At Manifa, we draw from this tradition—not to recreate the past, but to keep ecological wisdom alive through practical, place-based care.

Our commitment to conservation is not about isolating nature behind fences or idealizing “wildness” as something separate from humans. Instead, we follow a convivial conservation model—one that sees people, animals, and landscapes as intertwined. Protecting this forest means working with it, not extracting from it or standing apart from it. This includes managing vegetation regeneration, limiting erosion, ensuring clean water flow, and keeping waste out of the river.

Living landscapes also remind us that elephant welfare cannot be separated from environmental health. You cannot have healthy elephants in degraded ecosystems. By investing in the vitality of this land—planting trees, protecting soil, preserving native flora—we’re investing in the long-term well-being of our herd.

Finally, place matters because it roots our ethics. The decisions we make—from how we build paths to how we schedule activities—are shaped by the land itself. We let the contours of the terrain, the habits of the elephants, and the voices of local caretakers guide what is possible and appropriate. In this way, the forest becomes not just a home, but a co-author of our daily lives.

In a world where tourism can often flatten places into attractions, Manifa offers an alternative: a site where land, culture, and animal care are deeply entangled. This is not a theme park. It is a living landscape—one that teaches us, holds us accountable, and connects us to a wider web of life.

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Shared Work

Rethinking Labor as Ethical Companionship

At Manifa Elephant Camp, we believe that work—when approached with respect, care, and consent—is not inherently exploitative. In fact, for centuries in Laos and across Southeast Asia, elephants and humans have shared work in ways that built deep bonds. These were not just utilitarian relationships; they were spiritual, emotional, and interdependent. Mahouts and elephants traveled together, lived together, and relied on one another in forests, villages, and ceremonies.

Today, this tradition is often misunderstood. Critics from outside the region, particularly those informed by animal rights perspectives in the Global North, may view all elephant labor as oppressive or outdated. But this view often ignores both the cultural realities of elephant–human relationships and the current needs of captive elephants who cannot be released into the wild.

At Manifa, we take the idea of shared work seriously—but we reframe it as an opportunity for ethical engagement rather than domination. Our activities—whether it’s elephant riding, bathing, or forest walks—are designed around the capacity, temperament, and well-being of each individual elephant. Some elephants enjoy routine and human interaction; others prefer more space. We respect these preferences and adjust our activities accordingly.

Importantly, shared work also provides structure and stimulation for elephants. Research shows that appropriate levels of physical activity, environmental enrichment, and human interaction can reduce stress, prevent obesity, and support healthy social behaviors in elephants. Idle confinement, even in sanctuaries, can lead to boredom, frustration, and health decline. Ethical work, when balanced and meaningful, is not just acceptable—it’s beneficial.

Our mahouts are not trainers in the Western sense. They are companions to the elephants, forming relationships based on mutual trust and careful observation. When an elephant carries a person, it is not because she has been coerced with cruelty, but because the relationship between mahout and elephant allows for shared routines. It is our responsibility to ensure these routines never exceed the elephant’s physical or emotional limits.

Shared work also reflects a broader ethic we hold at Manifa: that living together means doing together. We do not seek to romanticize labor, nor to return to the extractive industries of the past. But we do believe that thoughtful, ethical collaboration between species can still have a place in the present—if it is grounded in care, attention, and the lived knowledge of those who walk beside elephants every day.

In this way, work becomes a site of connection, not control—a practice of being with elephants, not just using them. It’s a living tradition that honors both the elephant’s agency and the human responsibility to ensure that work remains fair, enriching, and safe for all.

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Cultural Continuity

Honoring the Past, Sustaining the Future. We preserve and respect mahout knowledge and traditions.

Elephant care in Laos is not a recent invention—it is a deeply rooted cultural tradition that stretches back centuries. Once known as Lane Xang, the “Land of a Million Elephants,” Laos has long woven elephants into the heart of its social, spiritual, and economic life. These animals have historically worked alongside humans in agriculture, transportation, and religious ceremonies. They are not merely tools, nor distant wildlife—they are sentient beings with roles in village life, oral history, and belief systems.

But this long-standing relationship is under threat. Global conservation movements often prioritize Western models of “wild” nature that exclude people, seeing any form of work or interaction as exploitation. At the same time, economic hardship and modernizing forces have pushed young Lao people away from traditional livelihoods, including mahoutship. As fewer youths are trained in elephant handling, cultural knowledge—passed down through generations—is at risk of being lost.

At Manifa Elephant Camp, we are committed to safeguarding this heritage. Our goal is not to freeze tradition in time, but to support its evolution in meaningful ways. We work closely with local mahout families to encourage intergenerational learning, where elders pass on not only techniques of care but the values and ethics that underlie them. We also create space for cultural storytelling, ritual, and language to remain integral to elephant care—not as nostalgic gestures, but as living practices.

In our camp, elephants are seen through a Lao cultural lens: as beings with spirits (khwan), personalities, and karmic ties to humans. Respect is not just shown through physical care, but through offerings, ceremonies, and speech. These practices help reinforce a worldview that sees elephants not as objects of ownership, but as relational beings—part of the moral world, deserving of dignity.

By integrating this cultural dimension into everything we do—from daily routines to tour programs for visitors—we hope to counteract the flattening effects of one-size-fits-all conservation. Tradition, in our view, is not in conflict with ethical care. It is a vital source of wisdom for how to live well with elephants.

In short, cultural continuity is not about clinging to the past—it’s about recognizing the deep roots of human–elephant relations in Laos and ensuring they have a future.

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Ethical Interaction

Manifa Elephant Camp offers activities like walking, feeding, bathing, and gentle riding—not as entertainment, but as forms of responsible engagement. Every activity is carefully managed with elephant welfare as the priority. Ethical interaction also means listening to mahouts, respecting the elephants’ cues, and ensuring tourism supports, rather than disrupts, elephant lives.

In recent years, many animal rights organizations have campaigned vigorously to ban elephant riding and close off opportunities for human-elephant interaction in tourism. Their motivation is often sincere: to prevent cruelty and restore freedom to captive elephants. However, emerging research from within Southeast Asia reveals a different, more complex reality—one in which good intentions have led to troubling consequences.

When riding and interaction programs were restricted at some camps, elephants were left with little to do. Deprived of physical activity and mental stimulation, they spent their days largely idle, consuming pre-cut food provided by caretakers. As Bansiddhi et al. (2019) found in a broad study of Thai tourist camps, this lack of engagement led to increased levels of physiological stress, as measured by elevated fecal glucocorticoid metabolites (FGMs), and in many cases, obesity. Surprisingly, elephants in “observation-only” camps—where no direct interaction or riding was allowed—showed higher stress levels than those in programs that included controlled riding or work.

A study by Kongsawasdi et al. (2021) examined the impact of weight on joint kinematics in elephants used for riding. The findings indicate that carrying up to 15% of an elephant’s body weight does not cause significant changes in gait patterns or physical distress. For instance, two average-sized adults riding an elephant equate to approximately 2.6% of the animal’s body weight, well within safe limits. They found that well-managed interaction programs—especially those involving walking and moderate riding—can promote physical exercise, reduce stress, and support the psychological health of elephants. In other words, a complete ban on activity does not automatically result in greater welfare. On the contrary, removing elephants from all forms of work may sever them from the rhythms of life they have long known.

These findings invite us to move beyond simplistic binaries of cruelty versus freedom, or work versus rescue. The idea that captivity is always harmful, and that non-intervention is always humane, fails to take into account the actual needs of elephants living in human care. In many regions like Laos or Thailand, elephants have been raised in close contact with people for centuries, and their well-being is deeply connected to the quality of those relationships.

This doesn’t mean all interaction is good. Poorly regulated tourism can exploit both elephants and humans. But ethical engagement, grounded in traditional knowledge, proper training, and scientific monitoring, offers an alternative—one where elephants are not used for spectacle, but meaningfully integrated into responsible tourism.

If we are truly committed to the welfare of elephants, we must ask harder questions and be open to answers that challenge ideology. Controlled riding and interaction, when done responsibly, may not only be acceptable—they may be essential for the physical and emotional health of elephants in tourism contexts.

Management factors affecting adrenal glucocorticoid activity of tourist camp elephants in Thailand and implications for elephant welfare

The Complexities of Elephant Riding: A Balanced Perspective

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Convivial Conservation

Conservation Through Connection, Not Separation

At Manifa Elephant Camp, we practice what is known as convivial conservation—a vision of environmental care that sees people and animals not as separate, but as deeply interdependent. Too often, conservation efforts rely on an outdated binary: wild versus domestic, human-free wilderness versus human impact. In this view, the best way to protect elephants is to remove them from human contact altogether. But in Laos, this logic doesn’t hold.

For generations, elephants have lived in close connection with people. They have worked alongside humans in the forests, participated in rituals and ceremonies, and roamed freely between jungle and village. These aren’t just ecological interactions; they’re social and cultural relationships built on mutual adaptation, local knowledge, and shared history.

Convivial conservation honors these entanglements. It asks not how to isolate elephants, but how to nurture the conditions in which elephants and people can continue to live together well. This includes:

  • Supporting mahouts and their families, whose generational expertise is often overlooked in global conservation policies.

  • Upholding traditional Lao practices that reflect respect for elephant agency, rather than trying to replace them with external standards that may not fit the local context.

  • Building models of care that are place-based and culturally informed, instead of importing one-size-fits-all solutions from the outside.

At Manifa, this means elephants are not “rescued” into static lives of isolation, nor are they commodified as mere attractions. Instead, they live in a dynamic landscape—cared for by experienced mahouts, engaged in appropriate activities, and surrounded by forest and community. We don’t treat conservation as a fence that separates, but as a web that connects.

This is also about justice. Too many conservation programs displace local people in the name of wildlife protection, turning them into bystanders—or worse, into problems to be managed. Convivial conservation resists this. It recognizes that local communities must be part of the solution, and that their livelihoods, cultures, and dignity matter too.

We believe true conservation doesn’t just aim for survival—it aims for flourishing. Flourishing elephants, yes—but also flourishing people, landscapes, and traditions. At Manifa, conservation is not a museum display. It is a living, evolving relationship that we tend every day.

In this vision, elephants are not only symbols of nature, but participants in a shared future. And that future, if we are to create it, will be convivial—co-created, co-inhabited, and co-sustained.

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Becoming with Elephants

At Manifa Elephant Camp, becoming with elephants means engaging in an ongoing process of mutual shaping, understanding, and adaptation between humans and elephants. It’s not just about living side by side—it’s about growing together through daily practices of care, attention, and relationship.

Co-shaping Life Through Long-Term Companionship

At Manifa Elephant Camp, we begin not with control, but with relationship. Elephants are not tools to be used or spectacles to be consumed—they are sentient, social beings who think, feel, and remember. We approach them not as objects of management, but as companions in a shared world. Our philosophy is grounded in the idea of “becoming with,” a way of living that recognizes how humans and elephants grow in connection with one another.

This means that our mahouts—many of whom come from families with generations of experience—do not simply direct elephants. They live with them. They walk together, work together, rest together. They learn to read body language, notice small changes in mood or health, and adjust their behavior in response. In turn, elephants learn the voices, gestures, and patterns of their human companions. Over time, both parties are changed—not through force, but through familiarity and trust.

This process of becoming with is slow and subtle. It cannot be rushed. It depends on presence, patience, and attentiveness. Every elephant has a personality. Some are playful, others cautious. Some form strong bonds with specific mahouts, while others prefer space and independence. Rather than enforcing a rigid routine, we let these preferences guide the way we interact.

Importantly, this does not mean that our relationships are always easy or harmonious. Elephants are large, strong, and willful. There are moments of tension and disagreement—just as in any meaningful relationship. But instead of interpreting these moments as failures of control, we see them as part of an ongoing dialogue—a conversation that teaches us to act with care and responsibility.

In Western views of animal care, there is often a sharp divide between “wild” and “domestic,” between freedom and captivity. But the human–elephant relationship in Laos has always existed in the space between. Elephants are not fully tamed, nor fully wild. They move between forest and village, between independence and companionship. At Manifa, we honor this in-between space. We don’t aim to dominate elephants, nor to isolate them from people. Instead, we try to cultivate a balanced life in which both human and elephant can thrive.

This relational ethic is not just about welfare—it’s about worldview. To “become with” elephants is to recognize that our futures are entangled. Their well-being is tied to ours, and vice versa. In a world that too often divides, extracts, and isolates, we choose to stay close, to learn across species boundaries, and to let elephants change us as much as we care for them.

Becoming with elephants is not a technique. It’s a way of life.

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