Five Elephants Died Trying To Rescue A Calf That Drowned In A Waterfall

After a calf fell over the Haew Narok (Hell's Fall) in Thailand’s Khao Yai National Park, a herd of elephants ran to the rescue, resulting in the deaths of five adult elephants.

Park officials heard elephant cries coming from near the waterfall at approximately 3 a.m. on Saturday. At 6 a.m., they went to check the area and found the drowned 3-year-old elephant, and two exhausted elephants on the side of the cliff trying to help it.

Khanchit Srinoppawan, chief of the national park, told the Bangkok Post that as they went further down the waterfall, they found another five drowned adult elephants. A total of six wild elephants died. Authorities believe the adults were trying to save the calf who fell.

In a Facebook post, the Thailand Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation said that Khao Yai National Park has been closed to tourists and that veterinarians are closely watching the two elephants that survived.

Rescue workers used ropes to recover the two elephants later the same day, giving them food after. A video by Edwin Wiek, Founder of Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand, posted on Twitter shows the two elephants standing on the side of the waterfall before their rescue. According to Wiek, one of them is the calf’s mother.

“Currently rangers are looking for ways to rescue two surviving elephants, one of them the mother of a calf that drowned,” Wiek wrote.

Wiek told the BBC that the two might find it difficult to survive after the incident, considering elephants rely on their herds for protection and food. They are also likely to suffer extensively from grief. "It's like losing half your family,” Wiek said.

This is not the first incident of its type at Khao Yai National Park. In 1992, eight elephants died after falling down the same waterfall.

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