About Us
Welcome to The Huay Pakkoot Elephant Community Foundation!
Learn all about our founder and our origins.
Welcome to the Huay Pakkoot Elephant Community Foundation!
- We are a registered non-profit organization in Northern Thailand.
- Our beliefs align with those of the elephants owners, mahouts, community and partners.
- The elephants are all semi-wild, meaning they are cared for by their mahouts everyday, but decide where they walk and what they do while in the forest, cornfields or land surrounding Huay Pakkoot.
- The elephants forage for their own food, while the mahouts ensure they have the healthiest diets, and enough water.
- Our goal is to bring back more elephants to these conditions in the future.
However, to succeed in this mission we need your help! Book your visit or donate to help the elephants today!
Meet the Founder
Hi! My name is Satit Trachookwamdee but you can call me Dee.
I am the founder of the Huay Pakkoot Elephant Community Foundation.
My family has lived alongside elephants for over 200 years, passed down through generations. I learned to be a mahout as a teenager by following my dad and uncles, and I have cared for elephants my whole life.
I am a qualified elephant vet's assistant, I have worked with various partners to study the elephants, and eventually I decided to set up the Huay Pakkoot Elephant Community Foundation with some of my friends in 2020 when COVID hit, causing the elephant tourism industry in Thailand to pause. All of Huay Pakkoot’s elephants returned to stay in the village, and feeding them and caring for them became expensive and difficult.
With the Foundation, we can support all the families and elephants that need help. This form of eco-tourism involves watching the elephants in their natural habitats, doing natural behaviours. Tourists can discover the semi-wild elephants in a rare and beautiful experience.
I am inspired by my ancestors to care for elephants in the same ways they have done for generations. We treat our elephants like members of our own family.
My aspirations for the future of the Foundation are that we can continue to grow in order to make a difference for the people and animals of Huay Pakkoot village. In this way, we will be able to bring many elephants back to the forest, and their mahouts to the community, all while giving support to the owners, mahouts and elephants from visiting tourists.
By bringing tourists to elephants in their natural habitat, the elephants are happy, healthy, free to walk in the forest, and forage for their own food.
We are developing new sustainable ideas with the foundation all the time and another focus we have is on reforestation. We want to make more forest areas for the elephants to stay in. To me, elephants are like my family members, and we care for them in the same way.
I invite you to come here to Huay Pakkoot and visit us to see our work, our elephants and our community.
Our Village
Huay Pakkoot is a Karen hill tribe village surrounded by close to 2,000 acres of community conservation forest which supports a rich biodiversity.
The village is home to roughly 400 Karen villagers, who have inhabited the area for over 300 years and protected the conservation forest surrounding the village since first settling in the area.
The village has a proud history of living and working alongside the endangered Asian Elephant, who also hold great spiritual significance in the village and today, over 60 elephants are owned by Karen families who have formed incredible bonds with their elephants.
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Since the ban on logging and the increase in demand from the tourist industry, many villagers rented their elephants to tourist camps as a means of income for the community. The elephants, along with their Mahouts, would live in the tourism areas for periods ranging from 1 to 3 years at a time.
However, due to Covid-19, 48 elephants returned from the camps to Huay Pakkoot due to the lack of tourists. Life for an elephant in Huay Pakkoot differs dramatically from those who inhabit some tourist camps. Now the focus is placed on allowing the elephants to live in an environment that promotes an as close as possible life in the wild.
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We have partnerships with community members from many families, who lead workshops, teach their traditional skills and love to share local folklore. There is also a growing numbers of shops, cafes and restaurants in Huay Pakkoot that benefit from the Foundation bringing in tourists.
When you visit our village you will be completely immersed in our culture as you will be staying with a homestay family, get a chance to chat with villagers, and spend time with the elephant mahouts.
Our Partners
We have partnered with a number of organisations, both national and international, to provide the best care for our elephants and to deliver the best experience to all our visitors.
