Thai Hospice Forms to Slow Water Buffalo Slaughters

Water buffaloes were once the mainstays of Thai rice farms. But Thailand’s economic boom in the ‘90s brought in mechanized agriculture, and many of the big beasts are winding up on dining tables.

Appalled at the slaughter, a lover of Thailand’s traditional beast of burden has started a buffalo hospice that has caught the attention of tourists, schoolchildren and animal-husbandry officials.

Boontha Chailert’s haven is also focusing attention on what scientists warn is the possibility that the water buffalo could become extinct in Thailand, an extraordinary threat for a domestic farm species.

Patting one of the gray-black beasts in the hospice, Boontha tells a visitor his aim in life is to save “as many buffaloes as possible.”

The idea for a hospice came to him on mornings while driving his sons to school, when he would often fall in behind a truck loaded with piles of buffalo bones from a slaughterhouse.

“I felt sorry for the dead beasts. Did they deserve that after years of hard work in the farm? I wanted to do something to save them,” he said.

The animals, also known as swamp buffaloes, have long been used in Thailand, mainly for plowing rice paddies. But a decade of prosperity into the late ‘90s gave farmers the income to buy tractors, and they began selling their buffaloes. Since Thais traditionally do not drink milk, the buffaloes had little practical use beyond their meat.

Six years ago Thailand had about 4 million buffaloes, but by last year, their numbers had declined to less than a million, said Pakawan Sakulmarn, a researcher.

Boontha conceded that his hospice alone can’t save the buffalo but believes it’s worth the effort. “Even though I may be able to save one in a thousand, it is better than none,” he said.

With his experience in running an elephant-safari camp for tourists, Boontha opened Ban Kwai, or Buffalo House, in Ban Muang Pha village in Chiang Mai province, 360 miles north of Bangkok.

He bought the land for $24,000 and purchased 31 buffaloes from slaughterhouses and farmers for $285 to $425 each.

Three more buffaloes have been born at the hospice.

“We will save a pregnant buffalo first, because it means we can save two lives at once,” Boontha said.

Being close to the resort of Chiang Mai, the hospice attracts tourists who watch buffalo shows demonstrating the animal’s role in traditional Thai farming. Nearby schools also send children to see the animals.

Tourists’ donations help defray hospice costs, and Boontha contributes some of his safari income.

The 15 handlers at the hospice keep a fire going at night to keep bugs and mosquitoes from bothering the buffaloes, which sleep in sheds built alongside the demonstration rice fields.

“The buffaloes here are very lucky. . . . They will live here until they die of natural causes,” said Phorn Luadreaw, 71, one of the handlers.

He once owned buffaloes but was forced to sell them when he retired from farming.

“They became useless for my family. No one in my village keeps a buffalo now,” he said.

Pakawan, who works at the Buffalo and Beef Production Research and Development Center at Kasetsart University in Bangkok, said a new threat has emerged for the buffalo population: People in Thailand’s north and the northeast have developed a taste for buffalo calf meat.

It is believed that more than 300,000 buffaloes are killed for meat every year, Pakawan said.

She said the buffaloes’ low birth rate won’t be able to keep pace with the slaughter.

“The swamp buffaloes can be endangered within 10 years” without the emergence of programs that are sufficient to save them, she said.