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    Giants of the Monsoon Forest: Living and Working with Elephants
    Giants of the Monsoon Forest: Living and Working with Elephants
    Giants of the Monsoon Forest: Living and Working with Elephants
    Audiobook7 hours

    Giants of the Monsoon Forest: Living and Working with Elephants

    Written by Jacob Shell

    Narrated by Tim Fannon

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A journey through the hidden world of elephants and their riders.
    High in the mountainous rainforests of Burma and India grow some of the world’s last
    stands of mature wild teak. For more than a thousand years, people here have worked with
    elephants to log these otherwise impassable forests and move people and goods (often illicitly)
    under cover of the forest canopy. In Giants of the Monsoon Forest, geographer Jacob Shell takes
    us deep into this strange elephant country to explore the lives of these extraordinarily intelligent
    creatures.

    The relationship between elephant and rider is an intimate one that lasts for many decades.
    When an elephant is young, he or she is paired with a rider, who is called a mahout. The two
    might work together their entire lives. Though not bred to work with humans, these elephants
    can lift and carry logs, save people from mudslides, break logjams in raging rivers, and navigate
    dense mountain forests with passengers on their backs.

    Visiting tiny logging villages and forest camps, Shell describes fascinating characters, both
    elephant and human—like a heroic elephant named Maggie who saves dozens of British and
    Burmese refugees during World War II, and an elephant named Pak Chan who sneaks away
    from the Ho Chi Minh Trail to mate with a partner in a passing herd. We encounter an eloquent
    colonel in a rebel army in Burma’s Kachin State, whose expertise is smuggling arms and valuable
    jade via elephant convoy, and several particularly smartelephants, including one who discovers,
    all on his own, how to use a wood branch as a kind of safety lock when lifting heavy teak logs.

    Giants of the Monsoon Forest offers a new perspective on animal intelligence and reveals an
    unexpected relationship between evolution in the natural world and political struggles in the
    human one. Shell examines why the complex tradition of working with elephants has endured
    with Asian elephants, but not with their counterparts in Africa. And he shows us how this
    secret forest culture might offer a way to save the elephants. By performing rescues after major
    floods—as they did in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami—and sustainably logging
    Asian forests, humans and elephants working together can help protect the fragile spaces they
    both need to survive.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateOct 29, 2019
    ISBN9781980064718
    Giants of the Monsoon Forest: Living and Working with Elephants

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    Reviews for Giants of the Monsoon Forest

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    • 4/5
      A fascinating little history of the logging industry in Burma which historically relies heavily on the semi-domestication of native elephants. The author compares this practice to capturing wolves, training them for a few years and then using them as alpine rescue dogs. It's a process that shouldn't and wouldn't work if the elephants were not at least somewhat adapted to it. The author sees this strange partnership as having a possibility of extending the Asian elephant's chances of survival. He also sees possible future applications if the elephants were trained in flood rescue. An amazing story of human/animal symbiotic relationships and even friendships.
    • 3/5
      Mediocre maps for a geographer. For a “professor” the book seemed to lack quite a bit in the style and substance departments. The book comes in at just over 200 pages, but it seemed as if the author was fleshing it out in too many places. I cannot argue with what he says as tis logical and good. But I’ve been many of the places he describes and I arrived at much the same conclusions regarding the forest, working elephants, captive elephants, etc. nothing truly groundbreaking here, but it does fit into the conservation message which many of us want to hear these days. Finished 26.10.19.
    • 5/5
      For those who appreciate elephants, Giants of the Monsoon Forest is stunning. Jacob Shell studied Asian elephants in the area between Burma, India and China. He has divided the stories into functional areas. So there are chapters on work elephants, fording elephants, war, transport and flooding.The intelligence demonstrated by elephants is remarkable:-An elephant carrying a huge log up a steep ramp found the log rolling up his tusks and over the top of his head. He thought about the problem, went into the forest and came back with a leafy branch which he inserted between his tusks to act as a backstop, and proceeded to amaze everyone on the project.-An elephant caught its foot in the rocks under a raging river where it was breaking up logjams. Another came to help out, using its huge body as a breakwater so the two of them could think how to solve the problem. She pushed the stuck elephant until it could move freely, and they used their trunks to help each other ford the river and climb out. During World War II, as refugees left Burma, some women were trapped on a sandbar in a monsoon-swollen river. Again, an elephant, knowing its own bulk, made its way to them. Standing upstream, it blocked the rushing waters, and walking slowly, was able to shepherd the women across the calmed waters to shore.-Tasked with lifting a huge log onto a flatbed truck, an elephant called Air Singh knew the log was too big and heavy to lift, but it figured out what to do. It pushed the truck around the muck (which the truck was unable to do) so it was positioned best for the operation. It carried two large logs over and placed them against the flatbed, making a ramp out of them. It nudged the big log several times so it had enough room to face the log and rolled the log up the ramp. All the activity shifted one of the ramp logs, so Air Singh kicked the log back into proper ramp position without missing a beat. Once the log was on the truck, he shoved it around until it was properly centered as a balanced load, so workers could strap it down.-Finishing a tiring job, a man began riding his elephant home. He soon fell asleep, but the elephant kept going, delivering him home, 40 miles away, by the moonlight. With their masters shot by US soldiers, elephants delivered the bodies to their families on their own, 60 miles away.The age -old method of controlling elephants still largely applies. Fandis capture elephants by driving them into huge pens, tie their feet, and when they calm down, begin training them. A mahout is the elephant’s trainer, coordinator, master and caregiver. Once trained, he releases the elephant every night. This serves two purposes. It saves the mahout from having to gather the 600 pounds of food the elephant needs every night, and gives it a sense of freedom. They can still mate with passing wild elephant herds.In the morning, the mahout has to track down the elephant. This is made easier by the long chain the elephant has to drag around, leaving a trail in the mud. The elephant also has loose shackles, so it can wander, but not run. It can usually be found a kilometer or two away.Elephants are (obviously) no dummies. They have learned to pick up the drag chain and carry it, leaving no trail. They have figured out they need to silence the wooden bells around their necks, so they stuff them with mud and leaves. This game goes on daily, for decades.Elephants cover themselves with dirt and mud every night, because insects own the dark. The mahout’s first task with the elephant is to take it to a river and wash and brush it. After this refreshing half hour spa treatment, elephant is co-operative and ready for a day’s work. This system has been in place for several thousand years, from what Shell found.Unfortunately, the geographic forest homeland of the elephants is in constant warfare, between tribes, between tribes and national governments, and between national governments. This has led to horrific situations. During World War II, British airmen were ordered to shoot any elephants they saw in Japanese held territory. In the Vietnam war, American airmen got the same order for elephants in enemy territory. It was enabled by napalm, stripping the forests of all vegetation where elephants might hide. The invasion of miners, developers and farmers has decimated the forests the napalm hasn’t, and the remaining forested areas can only support so many elephants. They have been in constant decline, to the point where Shell says there are only about 40,000 left. Compare this, he says, to African elephants, who are in the news all the time because of ivory poachers. There are still half a million elephants in sub-Saharan Africa.Shell covers all the angles, including the failure of tourism as a solution. Where elephants can lead healthy lives, there is little or no infrastructure for tourism. Where there is infrastructure, there are no longer any forests. It’s unfortunate, because tourism is a ticket to survival. But the book doesn’t harp on that. It is more a joy of documenting the remarkable intellects, personalities, and altruism of such remarkable animals, throughout history, and still today. It is clearly a labor of love. Shell spent many years researching first hand, plying the mud, walking the forests, fording the rivers, ingratiating himself to mahouts, fandis, and government officials, and of course, riding the elephants. It is a worthy document of a remarkable relationship.David Wineberg