News and Stories

Tom Yum soup is an iconic Thai dish that offers a tasty fusion of hot and sour flavors, perfect for warming up on chilly days—but here at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, this dish carries special significance as it relates to both our own herd of Asian elephants and their wild counterparts in Thailand.

The Zoo partners with Bring the Elephant Home (BTEH), an organization working to promote coexistence between people and African and Asian elephants through research, community engagement, and habitat restoration. In 2024, shortly after Elephant Trek opened to the public, a group of six Zoo employees, including me, traveled to BTEH’s Thailand headquarters in Ruam Thai Village to collaborate with their team and learn more about the impactful work being done both for wild elephant populations and the agricultural community.

Our food and retail partner, the SSA Group, also sent a representative along on this transformative journey. Allie Keating, sustainability & conservation manager for the SSA Group, was able to use her experience working with BTEH in Thailand last year, which included harvesting many of the ingredients that are used in Tom Yum soup, to advocate for the inclusion of the delicious and meaningful dish on the Zoo menu. Next week it will be featured in the Zoo’s Base Camp Café!

Why Tom Yum Soup? 

The key ingredients to Tom Yum soup—chili, garlic, lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime, onion, and coriander—also happen to be natural elephant deterrents. In an agriculturally dominated landscape bordering a national park with hundreds of wild Asian elephants, being able to keep elephants out of crops isn’t just convenient; it can make or break farmers’ livelihoods.

Thailand’s leading crop is pineapple, which is exactly what the farmers in Ruam Thai village have been growing over the last several decades. As it turns out, people aren’t the only ones who enjoy pineapple: the crop is extremely attractive to elephants, who began crossing the borders of the neighboring Kuiburi National Park and entering agricultural fields, leading to crop damage and increased human-elephant interactions—which can tragically result in injury or death for people and elephants both.

In an effort to reduce wildlife conflict while still supporting agricultural livelihoods, BTEH began working with farmers to convert their crops from pineapple to those used to make Tom Yum soup, as well as other elephant-deterrent varieties like ginger, chamomile, and citronella. This led to the formation of the Tom Yum Project, a community-based enterprise that supports the growing, harvesting, and selling of elephant-friendly crops and products that generate income for local farmers while promoting coexistence and landscape restoration. You can learn more about the Tom Yum Project and the products they create by visiting their website!

The Collaboration Continues

A second cohort of zoo employees just returned from Ruam Thai Village. This group brought their skills and expertise in education and interpretation, horticulture, animal behavior and research, and community engagement to co-create interpretive signage and support the design and development of a demonstration garden at the Tom Yum Project headquarters.

Outcomes from this and future projects with BTEH will ensure that people, elephants, and the ecosystems they share continue to thrive. In the meantime, the next time you visit the Zoo, be sure to make your way over to Elephant Trek to say hello to the herd and learn more about the Zoo’s partnership with BTEH—and don’t forget to stop at Base Camp Café next week to grab a delicious bowl of Tom Yum soup!