On Nov. 22, 2009, Rattle the Cage and Juliette West instigated the rescue of Ratree, a severely abused 35 year-old elephant, from the Surin Elephant Roundup. With Lek Chailert (Asia's famous Elephant Lady) and park volunteers the RTC film production crew escorted Ratree 22 hours by truck to her new home in Elephant Nature Park where she will never be forced bred or physically abused again.

Investigating the Live Elephant Trade

By Michael Timmons
Rattle the Cage Productions
Photography by Sirinya Chaidee

I plant the stubs of my chewed fingernails into the shoulders of my guide and we blast through the jungle on his old Suzuki, 150. It’s a three hour ride through the damp forest on a narrow single track to the Thai/Myanmar border where I am to meet the man who wants to sell me a pregnant elephant.

Juliette West, a 14-year-old elephant activist from Los Angeles is about to go on the journey of a lifetime to SE Asia where she will meet and work with famed elephant lady Lek Charlet. Together they will dive into the heart of the issues at the Surin Elephant Roundup, attempt to rescue an elephant or two and conduct outreach with local people and officials.

An unlikely hero from a small hill-tribe village overcomes overwhelming odds in her life-long quest to save the Asian elephant.

In the heart of South East Asia’s jungles a dark secret is about to be revealed. The illegal trade in elephants is on the rise and becoming a profitable industry for unscrupulous buyers worldwide. No new laws are being drafted and existing laws are rarely enforced. As trekking and tourism grows in South East Asia so does the demand for elephants. They come across the border from neighboring Burma at an alarming rate and are laundered into the system by corrupt officials. Conservationists are concerned, believing there may be less than 5000 left in the wild and that Burma is the remaining stronghold for elephants in SE Asia; Burma, a country under military rule and in constant conflict.

In the winter of 2007, RTC Director Tim Gorski and 4 other filmmakers teamed up with Dan Stone of Endeavor Media and traveled to the icy waters of Antarctica to film the epic documentary that sparked Animal Planet's Whale Wars. The resulting film has gone on to receive five festival awards.

The 3rd Antarctic Campaign undertaken by the controversial Sea Shepherd Conservation Society was arguably "the perfect combination of imperfections" and the actions taken to stop a Japanese whaling fleet were astonishingly reckless and admirable.

Our undercover footage and investigations of the notorious Tiger Temple in Kanachanaburi proved the temple is little more than a tourist trap and tiger farm. Our footage was utilized by CWI who has persuaded Animal Planet to remove their Tiger Temple advocacy story from their current programming.

View CWI's Complete Story

Our investigators spent 3 months in the jungle along the Thai/Burma border documenting the illegal elephant smuggling into Thailand for the entertainment industry.

In late 2007 RTC investigated the notorious illegal wildlife trade in Chatuchak Market, Bangkok. RTC reported several endangered species for sale in numerous shops in the market to the Asian wildlife monitoring network of www.traffic.org. The investigations instigated a significant bust.

Rattle the Cage spent two months in the field in Nepal and Thailand producing powerful PSA commercials for The Red Panda Network, Street Dogs of Nepal (SDON) and Rural Education and Development (READ).