The welfare of Asian elephants used in tourism, logging, and religious festivals, and evidence-based standards for improving their lives.
Working elephants in Asia represent one of the most complex welfare challenges in the world: animals with profound cognitive and emotional lives, long traditions of human coexistence, genuine conservation value in some contexts, and economic dependence of local communities on their labor. The path toward better welfare does not require ending all human-elephant relationships, but it does require eliminating coercive training methods, providing appropriate space and social contact, ending recreational riding programs, and transitioning toward models where tourists observe and support elephants living more naturally under compassionate mahout care.