Forest Protection Blog

Please give the elephants a chance.

elephants perception can help more humanity than technology do, in the case of natural disasters like tsumanis as we hnow ...elephants heads continually grow and grow, curious diference... Please we must respect wild life, we should learn of life!

In Curacao N.A. we do not have elefants(yet).Yet, 'cause a milionair played with the thought of importing them and releasing them adjacent to our National Park.
This Park : the Christoffelpark is home to a endemic very small deer(dogsized).
The same measures should be taken here to protect it.
But the same gouvernment policy here: no money, no interest in the matter.Lowgrade priority.
Recently the National Park organisation STINAPA was made helpless by cutting the gouvernments yearly donation to a third .This means some 400 thousand dollars less a year.
But there will be spend miljons of dollars for new hotel projects.

What surprises me the most is that India with its 1.4 billion population somehow manages to have 20,000 wild elephants.

I'd like to know which ngo's international or local are activly working on this issue.
A lot of very strong environmental work can ride on the shoulders of a big strong animal like the elephant eh? a good strong strong symbol to rally the movement.
Anyone from India reading this? whats going on on the ground?

Scary that comment about the 1.4 billion and the 20,000.

Dear Georgina Ponder,

I have been forwarded your complaint to Dr. Glen Barry of the Ecological Internet regarding our current email campaign which concern's the plight of South India's wild elephants. My partner Krista Roessingh and I wrote up the "Appeal for South India's Wild Elephants" and I am the one who put together the CC list. I took a lot of care to select addresses of government officials, media, ENGO's, foundations, and scientists who are involved in the purported "conservation effort" for the elephants.

I have reviewed your complaint, but I stand by my decision to include your address on our CC list. The reason being, is that your organization is listed as being a "patron" of the Asian Nature Conservation Foundation, whose Founding member and Trustee is Dr. Raman Sukumar. Your organization has also specifically issued Dr. Sukumar the "Whitely Gold Award for International Nature Conservation (2003)." Regretably, in spite of his having produced a vast amount of research work on the subject of India's wild elephants, Dr. Sukumar has been a great disappointment in as far as taking any concrete steps to protect them. In fact, our research has found that Dr Sukumar isactually a major obstacle to their protection.

We have encountered frequent complaints that virtually all funding that flows towards conservation projects for India's elephants is channelled through Dr. Sukumar's office, and is distributed through an entrenched network of ENGO and scientific cronies who have been studying the elephants, and producing reams of jealously guarded research which remains inaccessible to the larger conservation community. But the major, and most serious complaint about Dr. Sukumar is that he has gone built a large mansion for himself, with extensive fencing directly in the middle of a critically important elephant corridor near Bokkapuram, which is used by herds of elephants which travel between the Mudumalai/Bandipur/Wynaad/Nagarhole park complex and the Sigur Reserve Forest.

Of all the many human encroachments into wild elephant corridors that have been identified, this sort of development is certainly the most egregious and the most difficult to reverse. We are outraged that India's most reknowned elephant scientist has displayed such wanton ignorance and carelessness by proceding with such a project, and we are making this an issue in our campaign.

It is primarily for this reason that your Foundation was targetted in this campaign. It is very important that all Foundations and other funding organizations should be extremely careful about where they are directing their monies, lest those funds be used to Greenwash, or to support other corrupt activities instead of being usefully employed as a powerful and legitimate force for the protection of nature.

I sincerely hope that you will reconsider your support for Dr. Raman Sukumar.

Sincerely, Ingmar Lee

This is the sort of thing that all of us, as human beings, who share this planet with beautiful animals which actually balance out the energies of Earth together with all other living organisms, should highlight to everyone else so that someone somewhere will be able to assist in causing relevant parties to address the problem efficiently.
Many seemingly concerned parties (perhaps NGOs, perhaps individuals) may initially start out with the right intentions but along the way succumb to glamour or self-profits at the expense of the salvation of the ecology of our Earth.
I hope that this particular project will subsequently relate to the salvation of the wild elephants of South India. While someone out there may be able to help in some way, all I can do is pray.

Please let us respect all animal life on this planet, especially the elephants, being such noble creatures. Animals are an example for mankind.