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CAMBODIAN WILDLIFE SANCTUARY

The Cambodian Wildlife Sanctuary was created to protect elephants and other endangered animals of the region and to conserve their natural habitat. Read More >

ELEPHANTS IN CRISIS NEWS

SPONSORS

Founders' Circle
David and Pam Casselman
Julie and Gilbert Alexandre

President's Circle
Patty Shenker
Richard Mc Lellan M.D.

OUR PURPOSE

help endangered elephants

All over the world, elephants are in crisis. In the wild, they are slaughtered for their ivory and their numbers decline each year as more and more of their habitat is destroyed and altered. In captivity, elephants are chained up and tortured. Placed in impossibly small enclosures and isolated from their own kind, elephants in captivity suffer from chronic health problems that are as much physical as they are psychological. Sadly, most elephants who live close to humans die premature deaths.

In recent decades, the stress that human encroachment and abuse has placed on elephants has even resulted in a dramatic increase in violent attacks by these historically gentle creatures, coining a new term Human-Elephant Conflict.

In Elephant Breakdown, a 2005 essay in the journal Nature, (Gay) Bradshaw and several colleagues argued that today's elephant populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma. Decades of poaching and culling and habitat loss. . .have so disrupted the intricate web of familial and societal relations by which young elephants have traditionally been raised in the wild, and by which established elephant herds are governed, that what we are now witnessing is nothing less than a precipitous collapse of elephant culture.
It has long been apparent that every large, land-based animal on this planet is ultimately fighting a losing battle with humankind. And yet entirely befitting of an animal with such a highly developed sensibility, a deep-rooted sense of family and, yes, such a good long-term memory, the elephant is not going out quietly. It is not leaving without making some kind of statement, one to which scientists from a variety of disciplines, including human psychology, are now beginning to pay close attention.   -- Charles Siebert, An Elephant Crackup?, New York Times, 2006

Elephants In Crisis is paying close attention. The organization was founded on the belief that each individual elephant matters. Research has shown that elephant societies are some of the most complex on the planet and individual elephants possess incredible abilities to react to their environment, communicate with others, and feel emotion. Even now, after thousands of years of living alongside these majestic giants, humans are just beginning to understand why elephants do the things they do.

From the plains of Africa to the streets of India and Thailand, and from the critically threatened rainforests of Southeast Asia to the cramped confines of zoos everywhere, elephants are in crisis and need your help.