Three women from Wolfwood Refuge – Paula Woerner, Darla Lange and Barb LaRue – expanded their rescue efforts this winter to Thailand and Cambodia, where they spent three weeks performing community service and contributing to the ethical treatment of animals in local villages.
Woerner, the director at Wolfwood, embarked on her first international travel experience Feb. 13 with Lange, fundraising and events coordinator for the refuge, and LaRue, the longest-serving volunteer at the refuge. They traveled for three weeks in Thailand and Cambodia through Bamboo, a “responsible tourism” company that offers experiential, community service trips to developing countries, and returned to their wolf and wolf-dog sanctuary on March 8.
“I’ve set my life up working at the refuge in a way that doesn’t allow me to travel,” Woerner said. Having never been out of the country before, she had the idea to organize a trip abroad after she received the 2017 Animal Advocate of the Year award from La Plata County Humane Society. She set out to make it the most meaningful, memorable experience possible with the intention to leave a positive impact in the human and animal communities wherever she ended up traveling. Lange and LaRue also had limited travel experiences and jumped on board when an opportunity presented itself. They researched tour companies and chose Bamboo because they wanted to do their part to improve the lives of people and animals in developing communities in Southeast Asia.
The three women joined 11 others to form a tour group: four from the United States, five from Canada and five from the United Kingdom, all participants older than 50.
The mission for Thailand was to build a toilet and sanitation system in a remote village and help reduce the exploitation of elephants by improving job prospects and reconnecting the animals with families who live there. The group also toured the Soi Dog Rescue in Phuket, which saves dogs from the meat trade, and donated to the Clean Water Project and other support efforts for sustainable living.
The sanitation system cost $700 to build and could be used by 20 families. The trip was not only funded by volunteers, but 40 percent of what they paid went to support projects, such as elephant care, construction of homes and schools, toilets, sanitation the clean water initiatives.
In the village, Mahouts are responsible for feeding, bathing and taking care of elephants, which are typically ridden and treated in a practical sense as work animals. The Mahout villagers were the only people allowed to interact with the elephants, and others needed their permission to touch or even approach them.
“The elephants in Thailand are used like horses are here, as draft animals,” Woerner said.
However, because of the struggle to support the cost of taking care of the animals, the villagers are forced to exploit them as tourist entertainment to make money. The women from Wolfwood were there to reduce that exploitation and reunite animals with families, and each volunteer bathed and cut food for their elephant and fed them their normal diet of 300 pounds per day.
“The elephants recognize individual people.” Lange said. “This teenage elephant was messing with me. He would take more and more bananas from me and held them but he wouldn’t eat. So, the next time he wanted a banana, I said ‘nope’ and wouldn’t give it to him until he ate what he already had, and he understood that right away.”
Woerner, Lange and LaRue, with the other volunteers in the group, were each matched with an elephant based on the animal’s preference of human, not the other way around. One of the elephants, called “Maddie” was immediately drawn to Woerner. A Mahout even told her, “Maddie love Paula,” during her first interaction with the elephant. When the elephants were being matched up with humans, another volunteer wanted to pair with Maddie, but the Mahout told her “No” and, for a second time, said, “Maddie love Paula.”
And that was just one connection Woerner forged during the trip.
“I connected with a woman who was making a ring out of elephant hair taken from the tail,” Woerner said. “I showed her my bracelet, which is made from the hair of a wolf at my refuge, and she understood it was from my animal without being able to communicate the words. In that moment, I felt my own endangered animals reaching out from somewhere inside myself to share the connection, and I realized that was the one reason I decided to take the trip.”
When the group reached Cambodia, they set out to build another toilet and teach English to more than 200 children, who attended a free school in the village, to ease the struggle from lack of funding for materials and resources. For people who live in Cambodia, learning English can provide a way to make tips from the tourism industry and help support families in the village.
Before leaving Cambodia, the group gave gifts to village residents, such as a globe for a school teacher and a floor puzzle for students, and on their last day, they bought an entire cart of vegetables from a woman so she could have the day off. The food was given to children before they went home from classes.
“It was heartwarming,” Lange said. “The love and interest in nature and its amazing creatures bridged any differences and united us all.”
Woerner, Lange and LaRue represented Southwest Colorado and the United States during every interaction. They shared photos and stories of rescued animals at the refuge to show people what Wolfwood does in the community, and locals treated them with mutual affection, admiration and respect. The tour group members started planning visits to Colorado, networking for additional international projects, and a volunteer from the U.K. donated artwork for the refuge’s art auction fundraiser.
“I did not experience a single bad, negative experience with any of the people or animals there,” Woerner said.
Wolfwood Refuge is an Ignacio-based wolf and wolf-hybrid sanctuary created in 1995, after Woerner rescued her first wolf, named Winslow. The refuge currently supplies wolf-habitat enclosures for 60 animals, many of which arrive with injuries and behavioral issues that are treated and rehabilitated. It is located 11 miles west of Ignacio, off of County Road 318.
For more information, visit www.wolfwoodrefuge.org.
fstone@durangoherald.com
