The Back Story, compelling questions, and methodology

Nothing says riveting like power points, and data sheets right?  Well, for the seven Earthwatch volunteers and research assistants, it really was, keep you on the edge of your seats" riveting.  The primary objective of today was orientation and introduction to the species, the need for conservation, the research aims and educational goals of the program.  We will be diving deeper into all of theses areas this week, but for today we needed to lay a foundation.

As a science teacher, I found the presentation on the biology of elephants to be the area where my brain was most engaged.  In all honesty, in my perpetration for the trip, I researched many things, but the intricacies of asian elephants was low on my list of topics I covered.  From past work and personal experience, I do have detailed knowledge of other species.  As a teacher who has been granted the opportunity to learn (thank you Fund for Teachers) I find myself paying astute attention to both the content as well as how it is being presented and how that style engages those around me.  I imagine that chefs do this by trying to guess flavor combinations.  For me personally, I felt like I could add in the new knowledge about asian elephants in an already established part of my brain that filed information about horses, apes and ravens.

At some point I will probably list the highlights of what we learned, but for know, that feels too cumbersome, due to elephant biology only being a small focus of our orientation today.  I will say that I feel it is important for our students next year to do similar research and present basic information on a species of their choice.  How else can they create a framework to attach future wildlife knowledge gained?

After the biology of elephants, we spent time learning about the human-elephant history of Thailand starting 4,000 years ago, to present conservation, conflict between elephants and human, and pragmatic issues surrounding humans and elephants coexisting in Asia.  The Think Elephant International has a very large educational focus, and it will be writing more about the strategies in the next few days (aka, we have only been introduced.)

We then spent another block of time going over research protocol, and how we as volunteers can assist in data collection that needs many sets of hands, eyes and clip boards.  Because most of the data collection and experiment trials are to be used in future scientific publications, I will be intentionally vague about the details of the methodology and results.  What I can say, is we will come away from this experience with a much grater appreciation for the rigor and logistics of quality experimental design.

Today was not all a "sit and get" experience.  After lunch (which was wonderful as all Thai food is in my opinion) we loaded up in the van and headed up to meet the elephants. We are in a unique part of Thailand next to the Mekong river.  The other side of the river right in town is Laos and when we drove up to the sight we saw the Ruk river and on the other side is Burma.  At the confluence is a large grassland where many of the elephants on the preserve "hang out" before the monsoons flood the valley.

We first went to the large camp and met several of the 25 elephants that live in the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation preserve.  We got to feed one sun flower seeds (Pictures are on Connie's post), and we also got to pet the newest elephant who is only 3 months old.  They are truly magnificent, these elephants are very used to being around humans, but all contact is done with the elephant's Mahout present (you will see a Thai person dressed in blue and these are people who are personally attached to their elephant and they work as a team).

Lots of learning took place today, and lots of questions worth exploring.  It will be interesting to traverse the knowledge spectrum from very detailed data recording to large scale conservation initiatives.