For Years, Tourists in Bali Climbed Onto Elephants for a Ride. Then Indonesia Told Every Elephant Park to Stop

For years, a ride on an elephant was one of the classic holiday photos in Bali. Visitors climbed into a seat strapped to the animal’s back and swayed along jungle paths for ten or fifteen minutes.

That is over now, and not just in Bali. Indonesia has told every zoo, safari park and elephant park in the country to stop offering elephant rides.

The order came from the Ministry of Forestry. On December 18, 2025, the head of its nature conservation directorate, Satyawan Pudyatmoko, signed Circular Letter No. 6 of 2025. It says that riding shows at conservation institutions must end, whether visitors pay for them or not, because they go against the principles of animal protection, ethics and welfare.

Indonesia is home to the critically endangered Sumatran elephant and the endangered Bornean elephant. Animal welfare groups have argued for years that teaching an elephant to carry riders often involves painful, frightening training, and that the animals pay for those few minutes with a lifetime of stress.

The new rule did not take effect overnight. Bali’s nature conservation agency, BKSDA Bali, began checking the island’s elephant parks one by one in early 2026.

Bali Zoo, which had offered rides since 2011, stopped them on January 1, 2026. The zoo said it wanted to give its elephants more time and space for natural behavior.

Mason Elephant Park near Ubud was one of the last places still offering rides. After two official warnings, officers from the conservation agency visited the park on Sunday, January 25, 2026, and the rides stopped that day. The park’s director, Made Yanie Mason, questioned the reasons for the ban but said the park had stopped the rides.

By early February, the head of BKSDA Bali, Ratna Hendratmoko, said that all five conservation sites on the island had complied and were no longer offering rides to visitors.

There are a few narrow exceptions. Trained elephant handlers, called mahouts, may still ride elephants for forest patrols, for steering wild elephants away from villages, and as part of the animals’ daily care.

The elephants are not going anywhere. Officials are asking parks to turn toward education and watching the animals behave naturally, ideally without direct physical contact, instead of treating them as rides.

Arab News called Indonesia the first country in Asia to ban elephant rides nationwide. World Animal Protection called it a world-leading step and said it hopes other countries in the region will follow.

The short news report above, from KTAL News, explains the ban. For the elephants that once carried visitors all day, the seats on their backs are gone.