Formal Instruction and Apprenticeship Learning in Nepali Elephant Handlers

Abstract

Preliminary fieldwork conducted in the Royal Chitwan National Park, Nepal in the summer of 2001 confirmed the significance of apprenticeship learning for the maintenance and utilisation of the elephant resources that are so crucial to the operations of the park. In the past, elephants in Nepal were used for big game hunting, transportation, logging and other agricultural work. But since the inception of Chitwan as Nepal’s first National Park in 1973, a new era of elephant deployment has been inaugurated, in which their main uses are in providing jungle safaris for tourists, assisting in the monitoring of large mammals like tiger and rhinoceros, as well as engaging in anti-poaching reconnaissance.