Summary

Blanca Ojanguren, a 22-year-old Spanish tourist, was fatally attacked by an elephant at the Koh Yao Elephant Care sanctuary in Thailand while bathing the animal.

She was struck by its tusk, resulting in fatal injuries.

This tragedy highlights the risks of popular recreational activities involving elephants in Thailand.

It follows a recent fatal attack by a wild elephant on a Thai woman and adds to the 39 elephant-related deaths reported in 2024.

  • abysmalpoptart@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    26
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    4 days ago

    I found a little bit more info just for your awareness. It looks like she was studying at University in Spain, and was on a student exchange program living in Taiwan. She took a holiday trip from Taiwan, which a quick google search suggests can be as cheap as $80 in off season (i.e right now).

    I don’t think it’s fair to assume she was rich even by global standards. The average individual or family can absolutely save money for an $80 flight for a weekend vacation. According to Statista, the global average take home (net income) is equal to $8700 per year. An $80 plane ticket would be a little less than 1% of said income. That is a substantial amount of money for a vacation for some people, but still not an insurmountable amount to save up for. Considering this, it’s more likely that she was enticed to take a weekend vacation by the low cost flight (but of course i don’t know if that is actually what happened).

    As a side note, it is completely disingenuous to classify someone who might possibly be living in poverty in one country (under 14,580 per year in the USA, or 9535 euros in Spain, for example), of being rich on a global scale. Those kinds of comparisons are not helpful, as you cannot necessarily use your 14580 in the USA in a country where that income would be considered high income (in thailand, $20,000 per year is high income. Doesn’t quite overlap, but it’s surprisingly close). Everything costs more in a high income country, including the cost of emigrating from that country. A comparably lower income earner in thailand might be considered a middle class earner and be able to enjoy more vacations and more leisure than most Americans.

    I will agree that elephant related tourism is a huge problem, but that’s a different discussion entirely.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/0/spanish-tourist-dies-after-attacked-by-elephant-thailand/