Elephant Family, a registered UK charity, believes our world is worth sharing. And in Asia, that means protecting endangered elephants and preserving their natural habitat.
Since its launch in 2002, Elephant Family has:
- invested £3 million in securing and restoring vital corridors of land.
- supported local communities to reduce incidents of human-elephant conflict and improve the welfare of captive elephants.
- worked hard to highlight the plight of the Asian elephant with UK-wide education programmes and publicity.
Below is a recent blog excerpt about Thai Asian Elephants from the Elephant Family:
Elephant Family recently teamed up with the Elephant Conservation Network (ECN) in Thailand in a bid to prevent a vital forest region and its elephants from becoming totally isolated from the Western Forest Conservation Complex (WEFCOM). This forest region is home to the largest population of elephants in Thailand – approximately 1,000 – and numerous other important species, including tigers. However, human encroachment – much of which is by city-based land speculators exploiting landless farmers as agents – is steadily trapping a population of 150-175 elephants within the south-eastern section of WEFCOM. This area incorporates the 868km2 Salakpra Wildlife Sanctuary, the smaller Chalerm Rattanakosin National Park, and the unprotected Srisawat Forest Reserve.
Salakpra was Thailand’s first wildlife sanctuary, yet was also the first place in Thailand to record conflict between people and elephants. Working with local communities, forest rangers and conservation officials, ECN is turning human-elephant conflict into human-elephant co-existence…
The work will build on extensive surveys already conducted by ECN, as well as conflict monitoring and mitigation measures they’ve been carrying out over the past five years. It will also tie in with their increasingly successful forest restoration research project and their alternative livelihoods initiative, which is helping forest users develop alternative incomes so that they do not need to depend exclusively on forest resources. So far, these micro-enterprises include mushroom farming, dried fruit production and sewing cooperatives, to name just a few. Read more here.
Want to learn more?
- Follow these links to learn more about Elephant Family and its partnership with the Elephant Conservation Network.
- Sign the petition.
- Check out the Elephant Family video on YouTube.
Krup kum ka!
Windy Borman
Director/Producer, The Eyes of Thailand
