Just days after her May 3 graduation from the Michigan State University College of Veterinary Medicine, Erica Ward will be on a plane, heading for the Elephant Nature Park in Thailand’s Chiang Mai province where she’s been hired as a veterinarian.
In her second year of veterinary school Ward organized a trip for veterinary and pre-veterinary students to the park, a sanctuary for elephants rescued from the tourist and logging industries. By the time she left, Ward was hooked.
“Before I went, I was thinking it was going to be like any other trip,” she said. “I didn’t realize how much it was going to change my life.”
On Ward’s third trip to Thailand this winter, she accepted an offer to return full time after graduation.
Most of the park’s 35 elephants have been rescued from tourism or illegal logging. Some were working in tourism during the day and logging at night, Ward said.
“A lot of them are given methamphetamines to work harder and that deteriorates their joints and malforms their feet,” Ward said.
Three of the park’s elephants have lost part of a foot in land mine explosions, crossing between Thailand and Myanmar for the logging industry. Ward has also treated eye problems and helped with dietary and parasite management.
“It’s like MacGyver medicine,” she said. “You have to come up with a new type of boot for them or some way to treat their wounds. We’d rather have them out in the mud—even with feet problems, if that’s what they’re happy doing—if we can manage them and they can live a happy life.”
When at the park, Ward lives in a bamboo hut without access to hot water.
“You wake up and there are elephants roaming free, and water buffalo,” she said.
Ward likes living simply, but the park’s access to the Internet has proven useful. During her most recent visit, she emailed professors from MSU and Cheng Mai University to come up with the best treatment plan for a particularly bad eye case.
Though her three visits have only lasted a combined five months, Ward said she considers Thailand home.
“I travel all of the time and I’ve never gotten homesick, but I get homesick when I leave Thailand,” she said.
For more details on Ward’s work at the park, click here.