Delinquent Pachyderms Sent to Reform School : Once-Destructive Animals Taught Productive Careers on Island of Sumatra

Argo, 12, was once considered an incorrigible delinquent who smashed houses, flattened villages and trampled crops. Now he has turned over a new leaf and is the pride of a reform school for wayward elephants.

“He has a whole new life,” said trainer Didik, 19, who suffered a dislocated ankle and numerous bruises while civilizing the unruly pachyderm. Argo now performs tricks and gives rides to children.

Like many delinquent children, Argo’s wild youth can be blamed on a bad home situation and unsavory companions.

“The elephants became victims of progress, with the forests that sheltered them gradually cleared to make way for farmers,” said conservation chief Widodo.

The island of Sumatra, 140 miles northwest of crowded Jakarta, is home to an estimated 2,000 wild elephants, but its lack of population and its rich soil have lured farmers from all over Indonesia.

With new arrivals usurping the elephant’s traditional feeding grounds, the herds soon cultivated a taste for the crops of bananas, sugar cane, cloves, rice, coconuts and soybeans.

Exploding dynamite and buzzing helicopters of Western oil companies exploring Sumatra also frightened the elephants.

Stampeding in groups sometimes numbering in the hundreds, elephants invaded farms, wiping out harvests and homes--and sometimes the farmers. Hordes trampled through one settlement after another.

So far 16 people, including several children, have died, either picked up by powerful trunks and heaved aside or crushed to death.

Killing elephants has been banned in Indonesia since 1931 to protect them from ivory poachers, so villagers tried to drive the beasts away with fire, poles, firecrackers, drums, gongs and blasting music. Nothing worked.

“That’s when people came to us for help,” Widodo said. “They were angry that it was a crime to harm the elephants when their livelihoods and lives were at stake.”

At Way Kambas, Widodo said, the animals are prepared for new careers in entertainment, logging and farming.

He pointed to elephants frolicking in the river and others practicing balancing, acrobatics, precision marching and pirouettes. On special occasions all 42 elephants at the school play soccer.

They’re also taught such practical skills as clearing logs in jungle areas and hauling produce. But Widodo said he is more interested in bringing them to carnivals and circuses to amuse people, and possibly change the negative image the huge beasts have in Indonesia.

“Indonesians cringe at the mere thought of elephants, associating them with devastation and even death,” he said. “These loveable animals are suffering from a bad image.”

With no real experience in capturing wild elephants, Widodo turned to Thailand--which has long experience in training elephants for the logging industry--when his own efforts at arrest got nowhere.

Officials purchased two well-mannered bulls and tranquilizer guns and convinced five experienced Thai trainers to pass on their techniques. Roundups went far more smoothly thereafter.

Once calm, the elephants ambled into the trucks for the trip to Way Kambas and schooling in rehabilitation which started in 1985.

Tethered to a tree with its legs in chains, the newcomer soon learns he is totally dependent on his trainer for food, jaunts to the river for baths and special treats of sugar cane and bananas.

Since elephants are uncomfortable in heat and need to wallow or rest during midday hours, classes take place in the morning and late afternoon.

The first lesson involves learning to lift a front leg on command. The order is given, the elephant’s leg is tapped with a stick and lavish praise and patting follows the slightest inclination toward the right move. Thai elephants are available for demonstrations.

The same technique is used to induce the learners to walk when led, sit down and finally permit a rider--something which takes six months of persuasion.

“We don’t give them a treat each time they perform correctly because they’ll come to expect it,” Widodo said.