The dark side of wildlife tourism- thousands of Asian elephants held in cruel conditions

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Thu 6 Jul 2017 06.00 BST Last modified on Wed 14 Feb 2018 17.07 GMT Thousands of elephants being used for entertainment across Asia are kept in cruel, abusive conditions fuelled by the growing tourism industry, World Animal Protection has found. Three out of four elephants surveyed in south-east Asia’s popular tourist destinations are living in harsh conditions where they are being used for rides, with mostly steel or wooden saddles, and tied in chains less than three metres long. The scale of suffering experienced by elephants is “severe”, according to the animal rights NGO which assessed almost 3,000 elephants...