THE FUTURE of six sick elephants being treated as inpatients at the Friends of the Asian Elephant’s hospital looks much brighter after more than Bt20 million flooded into the foundation’s coffers over the past week.

The foundation’s founder and secretary-general Soraida Salwala said the donations were enough to finance her foundation’s operations for about 20 more months.

The foundation has been in operation for about 25 years already. But on Thai Elephant Day, last Monday, Soraida said the foundation may have shut down due to lack of funds for operations, raising concern over the fate of the six elephants, currently under intensive care.

Soraida said last week that the group’s hospital in Lampang was operating as normal and working hard to treat the six tuskers, which require full-time intensive care.

“Right now we have five elephants that are too weak to be taken care of outside hospital and thus are full-time residents of our hospital, while there is another younger long-term inpatient, Dante, who can leave the hospital when he is old and healthy enough,” Soraida said.

The elephants would receive the best treatment, no matter how the group’s financial problems are, she said. However, she admitted that if they were forced to close, she wouldn’t know what to do with elephants with such special needs.

Adisorn Nuchdamrong, National Park, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department deputy director-general, said the National Elephant Institute, which also has an elephant hospital in Lampang, could treat the ill elephants now at the Friends of the Asian Elephant Foundation.

“I am not sure about the transfer procedures and there will have to be a discussion between the two bodies, but we agree on the standpoint that the elephants will have to get the best care,” Adisorn said.

Soraida said her foundation was not in debt, as earlier reports had said, but the current budget could only sustain operations for a matter of months, and if more elephants need care, the hospital would be unable to look after them.

“In the worst-case scenario, we can only operate the foundation for around 12 months, because the entire [annual] budget is only Bt11 million, and we have expenses of around Bt800,000 to Bt1 million per month,” she said.

Although this was the worst financial problem the foundation had ever faced, she said she didn’t want to ask for donations from the public because she did not want to bother people.

However, donations can still be made for care of the sick elephants at the Kasikorn Bank account “Friends of the Asian Elephant”, account number 088-2-20983-0, or via Paypal at friendsoftheasianelephant.org/en/donate. Soraida also said she was considering legal action against people who reportedly made defamatory statements.