Championing Change: Duncan McNair on Saving Asian Elephants

Your recent “Legal Hero of the Year 2024” award is a huge accolade. What does this recognition mean to you personally, and how do you feel it will impact your work with Save The Asian Elephants?

I am vastly honoured to receive this highly prestigious award out of a pool of over 200,000 solicitors. I was present at the ceremony alongside so many distinguished professionals who could have won it. The real importance in winning it is to raise awareness of the cause for which my organisation Save The Asian Elephants (STAE) stands – the preservation and protection of this ancient, majestic but beleaguered species the Asian elephant – the mighty mega-gardeners of the Forests, the super-keystone species of them all.

To win my profession’s highest public recognition is humbling. But it must always be the poor animals, our brothers and sisters in nature, that we remember and work for, the great preponderance of Creation which just one species brings so low. I hope and believe the award will inspire and impel me to work harder for them, and to persuade others to do so.

Can you tell us more about the current challenges facing Asian elephants and how your organisation, STAE, went about addressing them?

I founded Save The Asian Elephants in 2015 after my first visit to India, where I was utterly traumatised to see endangered baby elephants beaten and stabbed, screaming and crying, to “break” them for easy use in tourism – so much generated in the UK.

STAE’s mission is to help preserve and protect this wondrous species, whose numbers have crashed spectacularly almost to no return. The aim was new law to stop the advertising and sale of unethical animal tourism practices, including amongst hundreds of practices, elephant riding (which involves prior extreme brutality). But not only the elephants: also now by virtue of the landmark legislation we have gained, the Animals (Low-Welfare Activities Abroad) Act, STAE stands for all species across the world exploited, harmed and killed for tourism “fun”. Include on the list baby monkeys enslaved from the forests to a life of selfies and profile pics, tiger cubs just photo props then drugged and chained for life in tiny cages, “walking with lions” later sold on for “canned hunting”, dolphins and orcas in tiny featureless pools till death, ostriches seriously disabled and in agony by being ridden – all amongst those to gain from this law whose ultimate goal is to steer the market towards ethical tourism.

I felt other charities were not approaching the problem from the right angle. I knew we had to develop a powerful and persuasively presented evidence base, formulate coherent and credible, consistent policies, hugely raise public awareness and gain vast support, and then lean hard on the political classes – to change the law and make sure it really works. No more empty blandishments from unethical travel companies about change  – we needed compulsion of law, widely publicised and robustly enforced.

Your advocacy has had a global reach. How do you envision the Low-Welfare Act and other legislation shaping the future of animal welfare across the world?

This quick guide explains the meaning and importance of the Act: Landmark New Animal Protection Law Explained – STAE   I believe the Act, properly implemented and enforced and coupled with a carefully considered public information campaign, can have a real influence in the UK and far beyond, in any nation where unethical tourism markets flourish – sadly that’s almost everywhere. Every audience I have addressed in whatever nation has been responsive, often horrified, wanting something to be done. Few benefit from the annihilation of our planet’s wonderful, biodiverse species, but we all are depleted by it, as individuals, as nations, as planet Earth.

It is important that the Act takes hold in our own country before we can expect its measures to gain traction elsewhere.  I have worked to secure a key meeting with Government Ministers and officials in October when my team will urge early implementation. The mighty Low-Welfare Act Coalition I lead has provided Government with a mountain of evidence of commercial abuse to numerous species and the very regulations we insist they now introduce to give effect to the law. We will remind them these measures were virtually unchallenged at every stage in the Bill’s Parliamentary process, and that HM King Charles immediately thereafter granted Royal Assent – within two hours!  The purpose of these measures is not to damage tourism or hinder our access to the animal kingdom, but to steer the market from brutal and dangerous to ethical, while there is still time.

Can you talk about the wrongs of unethical tourism and how individuals can make more responsible choices when it comes to animal-related tourism?

Unethical tourism, so prevalent today, is catastrophic for animals and their terrain, on which we all rely. It lays waste our one home, diminishes our lives and ends those of defenceless animals. Some of the world’s biggest businesses generate a culture in which its manly and courageous to take on a wild creature. But they’re not wild, they’re drugged, declawed, eyes greased, helpless, and its all completely uneven. The animals with whom tourists are coaxed to have selfies, play games and tricks or even to kill when cowering in a cage – for tourism fun – have no chance at all, no life, no dignity, no mercy. It’s cowardly but it plays to Man’s ego and vanity, especially if they can then adorn their fireplace back home with the head or pelt of the victim.

Never buy a holiday where you can touch or play with animals, always challenge your holiday provider as to whether they do, turn away from providers if they do, and tell them why. Research ethical holidays on line. Check reviews carefully: they are not infallible but are a guide. And seek guidance from stae.org. Please also support STAE in getting the Low-Welfare Act implemented.

As a Christian, how does your faith influence your passion for animal welfare and the work you do at STAE?

One sometimes frets at the pace of change whilst numerous animal species (and thousands of humans attacked by maddened, tortured captive animals) needlessly suffer and die from abusive commercial exploitation. One wills that the influence of the Holy Father’s encyclicals on care for Creation could be felt more obviously.

I see completely an alignment of what STAE is trying to do with the true beliefs of the Church, articulated by many of its saints and doctors. I carry a little note of the words of St Basil the Great (of Caesarea) which resonate down 1,700 years. Of animals and their role he said:

May we realize that they live not for us alone

but for themselves and for Thee, and that they love the sweetness of life even as we,

and serve Thee in their place better than we in ours.

All the world religions with whom STAE has engaged repudiate cruelty to our fellow creatures. They reject claims that, for example, the violent breaking of wild animals for use in tourism is any part of their tradition or belief, as is often claimed by those committing the violence for commercial gain.

What message would you like to share with those who are new to the cause of protecting Asian elephants and other animals, and how can they get involved?

Do get involved. I so believe that whatever Man has done wrong he can set aright. It can, of course, take a lot of time and people.

For ways to help and letters to write