The Elephant TONG BAI

The Story of a Sadly Brief Encounter

As remembered by the founder, Bodo Jens Förster

The Beginning

When three calves were born at the “Ele­phant Spe­cial Tours” camp in 2006, the idea arose to estab­lish our own ele­phant breed­ing pro­gram. We wanted to make our own small con­tri­bu­tion to the con­ser­va­tion of these mag­ni­fi­cent pachy­derms. There are sev­er­al factors to con­sider: Ideally, an ele­phant has a life expect­ancy sim­il­ar to that of a human and must be cared for, looked after, and fin­an­cially sup­por­ted over this long peri­od. It also takes sev­er­al years before a baby ele­phant can even begin to recoup the costs it incurs. Liv­ing with ele­phants and devel­op­ing pro­jects with them means one thing above all else: you need time and must think long-term. Breed­ing bulls were not avail­able in 2006, which is why a sus­tain­able breed­ing pro­gram was out of the ques­tion. When an offer to pur­chase a male ele­phant came in Octo­ber 2009, the ques­tion of fin­an­cing arose. I didn’t have the money to make such an invest­ment. For­tu­nately, how­ever, three guests who had accom­pan­ied me on an ele­phant trek a year earli­er had already said in advance that they would con­trib­ute money. This made it pos­sible for Birgit Sieber­ling, Ursula Kern, and Gün­ther Sippl to fin­ance the ele­phant “Tong Bai.”

Struck by Lightning

Tong Bai was 26 years old at the time and was work­ing in a camp where he was being dom­in­ated by anoth­er large bull ele­phant. When he came to us, he had all the qual­it­ies of a great future breed­ing bull. He had settled in won­der­fully, but then, unfor­tu­nately, March 20, 2010, arrived. I will nev­er for­get that day—we were exper­i­en­cing severe sum­mer storms. Our ele­phants were out in the forest that night. I had told the mahouts in advance to have Tong Bai spend the night near the camp. Unfor­tu­nately, this did not hap­pen. The tree he was stand­ing by that night was struck by light­ning, and Tong Bai, in a pan­ic, tumbled down a slope and sadly died. I sat beside him for a day, accom­pa­ny­ing him on his jour­ney to the next life. That night, sit­ting next to the dead ele­phant, I real­ized that I could not con­tin­ue the com­pany Ele­phant Spe­cial Tours—as I had built it—in the same way. Giv­en my vis­ion for mean­ing­ful fund­ing of ele­phant pro­jects, I would nev­er be able to raise the neces­sary money on my own.

A Secure Future

In memory of Tong Bai, the idea for a non­profit ini­ti­at­ive was born: to sup­port pro­jects that do not need to be self-financing—but are ded­ic­ated exclus­ively to the well-being of ele­phants. Thus, the Ger­many-based non­profit asso­ci­ation TONG BAI ELEPHANT e.V. was foun­ded on Septem­ber 30, 2010—and registered on Decem­ber 2, 2010. The three co-own­ers of Tong Bai—Birgit Sieber­ling, Ursula Kern, and Gün­ther Sippl—were found­ing mem­bers of the association.