Save Elephants: Grow the Communities They Live In

I hope all is well. I just wanted to give you a quick update on our activities. A lot of exciting things happening!

As you know, we have been very active in pushing back against President Trump and his decision to overturn the ban on the import of elephant trophies into the US. We are also working to stop the Department of Interior’s efforts to promote the slaughter of elephants around the world using taxpayer dollars. These actions by the Trump Administration represents one of the greatest threats to elephants in decades. Until the Trump Administration, the US played a pivotal role in global elephant protection efforts by using our strength to push other countries – like China – to crack down on the ivory trade.

But since the Trump Administration has abandoned our nation’s critical role in protecting elephants, other countries are aggressively supporting the killing of elephants. Botswana is a perfect example. It was once a leader in elephant protection but has now reopened trophy hunting so wealthy game hunters from the US can kill an elephant and take their trophies home. With the US being absent from helping protect elephants, more countries like Botswana will begin allowing for trophy hunters to kill the few remaining elephants in the world.

One course of action we are pursuing is through our Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests with the Department of Interior to get information on who is the driving force behind the Administration’s efforts. We believe that one thing we will find is that Don Jr had a role in this since he as an avid elephant killer.

We have also enlisted John Kasich and Hillary Clinton to support our efforts and to push Congress to act to stop the Administration’s efforts. They jointly signed an op-ed that appeared in the Washington Post that gives The Elephant Project a great shout-out. We drafted the op-ed for them and are partnering with them on this important project as well as other efforts we will be undertaking in other parts of the world. 

In addition to our legal and Congressional efforts we started the Horton Series of Educational Cartoons that we are using to spread awareness via our online and social/digital platforms.

Another area of great focus is to help end human-elephant conflicts – which is the second biggest contributor to elephant deaths around the world after poaching. We just signed an agreement with the Government of Myanmar to help relocate elephants to areas where they are safe and not subject to death from human-elephant conflicts.

We are also helping fund the building of electric fences in Myanmar that will help keep elephants out of the crops of local villagers. If nothing is done, these villagers will simply kill the elephants either by themselves or by calling in poachers to do it for them. Here is a short video that will give you more information on our efforts. Additionally, we continue to work with the Myanmar government on creating a safe, secure place where elephants live in peace by fostering an environment through innovative corporate, government, and non-profit partnerships, where protecting elephants and ensuring their protection produces prosperity for the people. This solution is based on free and fair market principles that will prove that ensuring the safety and security of an elephant is more valuable to governments, communities, and the people than a dead one. You can learn more about these efforts by watching this short video.