“This set of relationships gives it to them, and financially rewards the camps that take part,” he said.

Buffalo Tours, one of the 10 operators working with Travelife in Thailand, has sent more than 4,000 tourists to complying elephant camps so far this year, according to its marketing manager, Ewan Cluckie, and others report similar results. That number could grow as bigger companies like Royal Caribbean Cruise Line add Travelife-approved elephant tours as shore excursions.

What do the guidelines say?

Much of the 109-page checklist is devoted to basic health, based on scientists’ long study of working elephants’ proper diet, exercise and activity. For example, they need strenuous work such as rugged jungle treks in order to properly digest. Few of the people who run elephant camps have been professionally trained in how to care for them and have begun to rely on experts, often from the national university’s elephant center.

The guidelines include specific rules for riding elephants, restraining them with leg chains for limited periods of time, and for using the traditional bullhook that’s used to guide them and, in the wrong hands, to torment them. When it comes to riding the animals, for instance, under the Travelife standard the elephant is allowed to carry only 10 percent of its body weight with one or two riders, no saddle or a light one mounted over its shoulders, and in a natural setting that’s easy on an elephant’s feet, where it can forage along the way.

All of this stands in sharp contrast to the gruesome rides common in Thailand until a few years ago. Unscrupulous operators would overload elephants and march them in a circle over broken pavement for as long as 12 hours for busloads of tourists, arousing global outcry.

How can I find an approved camp?

Finding the approved camps could take some effort and patience for U.S. travelers. (Travelife doesn’t yet do business with U.S. travel agencies.) The camps generally don’t market themselves overseas, so Americans have to find them through Thailand’s 10 Travelife-certified tour operators. Few of them are set up for direct sales, leery of doing anything that travel agents might perceive as stealing their business.

But these companies can be valuable sources of information. Their names — the larger ones are Khiri Travel, Buffalo Tours and Exo Travel — appear on the Travelife site and that of program co-sponsor, the Pacific Asia Travel Association. Americans can contact them directly and simply ask how to find one of the Travelife elephant camps. Phone calls asking for the “ethical elephant visit” person work far better than emails — someone almost always speaks English. Most will connect a caller to the sustainability officer, often in the Bangkok office, who can make the right connections. A few operators such as Buffalo Tours will even directly book customers.