- International Elephant Day 2021

Elephants today are ravaged by poaching, human-elephant conflict, disease, and habitat loss. Add to that their near two year long gestation period, it isn't difficult to see how critical it is to secure their future sooner rather than later. Monumental conservation efforts from range countries and other collaborating countries as partners have made significant strides in pinpointing what is necessary to save elephants and see them into the next century, preserve their habitat and allow for historic migratory routes to remain intact, end the poaching of ivory, allow for rural communities to be in charge of and mitigate their human-elephant conflict, demand that sustainable palm oil be used instead of slash and burn deforestation for new plantations.

What is so important to understand is that saving elephants doesn't end with them - because they are an umbrella species, countless thousands of other plants and animals depend on them for survival, from tigers, rhinos, leopards, and even small frogs that spawn in their rain-filled footprints during the monsoon. Ultimately, we are all in this together.