Huay Pakoot Elephant, Gibbon & Forest Conservation

Join non-invasive elephant and gibbon conservation in the mountain forests of Chiang Mai, northern Thailand. You will be supporting Canopy Conservation's field team and the village's mahouts in their daily conservation work, running since 2010. Join for two weeks or up to six months.

The mahouts from the community guide the herd through the forest, and you go out with them, recording behavior, welfare and movement from a distance — no riding, bathing, feeding or contact. The herd lives semi-wild above the village, so it's a rare opportunity to join research on Asian elephants that are not in captivity or tourist camps.

Gibbon conservation is the other long-running focus. Dawn sight-and-song surveys map family territories across the Mae Chaem forests, and you are trained in species identification, survey methods and data recording to take part.

You also run bird surveys and camera traps, log records to iNaturalist and eBird, plant trees, build ecobricks and support local education programs in the village school and community groups.

Days have a theme: fieldwork in the morning, data and workshops in the afternoon, village life in the evening. Weekends are free.

You live with a Karen family in their own home, in a private room — eating with them, picking up Pakinyaw basics and spending evenings in the life of the village. You will be living in basic village conditions. Accommodation, meals, the first night in Chiang Mai, the transfer in, training and all project costs are covered, and your fee reaches the village through the community foundation.

Saturday starts year-round, 2 to 24 weeks. Age 18+.

Canopy Conservation works in Huay Pakoot alongside the community-founded Huay Pakoot Elephant Community Foundation, established in 2021. It is one of the independent organizations in The Impact Network, which gives small local nonprofits the training, standards and systems larger operators have, so the organization you volunteer with is the one doing the work.