Melbourne-based adventure travel company Intrepid Travel has ended elephant rides on all of its trips following extensive research to assess the welfare of captive elephants at entertainment venues in Asia.
The research was conducted by the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA).
Intrepid said Asian elephants are highly endangered and tourism demand has led to venues where elephants are forced to do unnatural performances.
The research concludes that this causes pain and suffering to the elephants, and that the tourism industry has added to the number of elephants being poached from the wild.
UK tour operator STA Travel last week announced that it would no longer offer elephant rides on trips in Thailand and it has stopped featuring SeaWorld parks in the USA
"We applaud recent moves in the tourism industry to end elephant rides," said Geoff Manchester, Intrepid Travel co-founder.
"Responsible travel has been central to how we’ve run Intrepid for 25 years and as an industry we can do more to help protect wild animals from cruelty."
Over the past 10 years, The Intrepid Foundation, Intrepid Travel’s not-for-profit fund, has donated more than A$320,000 to animal and wildlife conservancy projects including Friends of the Asian Elephant in Thailand and the Charles Darwin Foundation in the Galapagos Islands.
