Bua Ngun passes away

At almost 70 year of age Bua leaves our world

Bua Ngun arrived at WFFT in November 2009 in a poor condition. After WFFT received a complaint about an old female elephant chained up in Burirum province in Thailand, Edwin traveled up to this location to find an old elephant chained up in a coconut field, suffering from severe abscesses all over her body and no drinking water, no shelter against the sun or rain. Bua Ngun was no longer working for her owner and for this reason she was severely neglected. Thailand has no animal welfare laws and for this reason there was actually very little we could do for her if the owner wished not to cooperate.

Edwin found a local veterinarian who was hired on the spot to treat Bua with permission of the owner, Edwin trying to convince the owner to give up Bua as she would need long and expensive treatment. Late in the afternoon the owner finally agreed to let Bua Ngun go and transportation could be arranged to travel the long distance to the WFFT elephant refuge and wildlife hospital. As the rescue, transportation and treatment was going to be very expensive and long-term we still had one problem; who was going to help with all the costs? Edwin called Geert Drieman and Elleke van Renesse in Amsterdam who had offered in the past to help out an elephant if needed, they immediately offered to donate towards Bua Ngun’s rescue. Bua Ngun was taken up the truck before darkness and we all prayed she would make it to the WFFT center, as it was a trip of up to 10-12 hours…

When Bua arrived she was tired but immediately went for the food that was awaiting her. Treatment on her wounds started right away (see link to story at end of this page) and gradually she got better, bit by bit. 8 months later she was joined by June the elephant from Surin province, at first not really liking it to split her food and living space, but soon after they became best friends. What was probably the weirdest feeling for her was that she was no longer chained, 24 hours a day, we found her several times outside her paddock eating and destroying our forest and nearby pine-apple fields!

Bua has lived a pretty nice life at WFFT compared to the more then 60 years of slavery she went through. More than three years at WFFT, with June as her soulmate. Bua Ngun deteriorated lately with an infection to her hind-leg that became a serious problem and needed daily treatment. She was given anti-biotics, good pain-killers and had her wounds cleaned daily using (local) anesthesia. We actually did see improvements over the last weeks with Bua again walking around her enclosure as before. On Monday the 8th of April Bua Ngun collapsed during treatment and unfortunately did not recover from her ordeal. “Bua” passed away after trying to get her back on her feet again at 22:00hours.

We would like to thank all volunteers and sponsors for making Bua’s last 3 and a half years for what they were, the best possible! Of course her very best years must have bene the first 2 years of her life in the wild with her mother and her herd, but we rest assured that the last last years of her life made up some of the suffering of her 60 years of slavery to mankind.

Rest In Peace sweetheart, your kindness to people even after all they did to you makes you stand out as a very forgiving individual, forgiveness that we hardly see in mankind.

For the story of how Bua arrived at WFFT in November 2009 click here!