Meanwhile the Tourism Ministry is considering whether the family of 36-year-old Gareth Crowe can be compensated.

Crowe was riding on the elephant with his 16-year-old stepdaughter, Eilidh Hughes, and a local guide on the resort island of Samui in Surat Thani province when the animal turned violent.

The handler climbed down from the pachyderm and was taking their photos when it shook both foreigners to the ground. It then trampled the father and gored him with a tusk. He died at the scene, and his daughter was injured.

Tourism Minister Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul said she had assigned her ministry to look into the details of the incident and report back on whether the family of the Briton would be provided with compensation.

She will take the opportunity to visit the site on Koh Samui during her visit to Phuket this week to check if the services for tourists meet the ministry’s standards.

Surat Thani Governor Wongsasiri Promchana held an urgent meeting of authorities concerned, including tourism and livestock offices, to examine the regulations and rules concerning use of elephants for tourism purposes.

They will also jointly investigate the incident, the governor said.

Island Safari Tour has suspended its trekking service for tourists pending investigation.

Wongsasiri ordered a check of the number of animals in five elephant camps in the province and found that the number registered by the livestock offices of Surat Thani province and Koh Samuidistrict did not match.

The Koh Samui office put the number at 38 while the Surat Thani office’s number was 63. The governor said he would find out why the numbers differed.

According to an initial interrogation of the mahout, the elephant, named Golf, appeared to be in musth – a periodic rise in reproductive hormones – a few days ago and during the day when the incident happened, the weather was hot, which might have put the animal under stress.

Meanwhile Wannasiri Morakul, deputy permanent secretary of the Tourism and Sports Ministry, said the incident on Koh Samui underlined the concerns about safety standards for tourists.

The Tourism Department has issued standards for adventure tourism and elephant camps, but the problem is that the ministry has no authority to enforce them. “Now the operators apply the standards if they want to,” she said.