This Week's 'Elephant in the Room', NRA is lobbying AGAINST ending ivory bans, Elephant Aware, the Mara Mobile Vet Unit, the Mara Siana Conservancy, the Kenya Wildlife Service, Wildlife SOS Elephant Hospital & the Elephant database at the Sustainable Action Network (SAN) and Sunset TV!

On Thanksgiving Day, the Elephant Aware, the Mara Mobile Vet Unit, the Mara Siana Conservancy and the Kenya Wildlife Service teams together spent many hours trying to help this female elephant after she had fallen into a river. 

It was quickly discovered that she had been badly injured by three poisoned arrows and it seems she had fallen from a steep river bank, likely during the attack and this resulted in her being partly paralyzed to where she could not move her back legs at all. 

Despite tremendous effort from everyone to get her out and back onto her feet, thereby saving her life, it was to no avail and the kindest option was to euthanize this poor elephant to prevent enormous further suffering, a decision which was very difficult to make. All evidence points to a poaching attempt which ultimately and cruelly cost this elephant her life. 

Needless to say this tragic incident has left all of us deeply heartbroken and we are thankful to everyone for trying so hard to save this elephant, as is the intention with every wildlife species in need of help. 

The rangers will continue patrolling within this remote and key area to try and find the perpetrators in a joint effort together with the authorities. It is our hope that this beautiful elephant who left such an impression on all of us will be at peace now and certainly never forgotten as we keep on in our collective endeavor to protect her species.

On today's patrol the rangers were busy as usual watching over multiple herds of elephants and working alongside community members to prevent Human-Elephant-Conflict. This is something our team does daily and it is of vital importance in securing a future for elephants and other wildlife of the Mara ecosystem. Please show your support by following @elephantaware and leaving a comment! All of the support we receive does make a difference and is truly appreciated!

On Friday, November 16, we launched India's very first hospital for elephants! 

With this massive new facility, we can provide the best care possible to as many as three elephants at a time. 

Thanks to us, we've been able to outfit the Wildlife SOS Elephant Hospital with top-notch, state-of-the-art medical gear, including but not limited to the following:

• wireless digital X-ray equipment, 
• thermal imaging and ultrasonography labs,
• hydrotherapy ponds,
• quarantine facilities, and
• a medical hoist for comfortably lifting and moving elephants who need specialized intensive care.

Wildlife SOS hospital staff will also be able to monitor ailing elephants 24 hours a day via an infrared closed-circuit TV system.

The 12,000-square foot Wildlife SOS Elephant Hospital

What's more, we're positioning this hospital to serve as a training center for everyone who works with elephants in India. To this end, we've built an observation deck with excellent sight lines so that veterinarians, students, interns, and elephant caretakers can observe our elephant medical treatment techniques in action — while learning about humane elephant management and compassionate care. 

In the ground-breaking ceremony on Friday, celebrities, Indian government officials, and journalists saw presentations, took facility tours, and mingled with Wildlife SOS staff to learn more about this landmark achievement for Asian elephants. This important event was covered everywhere in the world, from the U.S., U.K., and Japan to Pakistan, Nigeria, and Iran. Click the links below to see just a few of the stories! 

Huffington Post
The BBC
The Times of India
Reuters
Australian Broadcasting Corp.
The Irish Times

A jumbo, jumbo thank you once again to all our supporters whose compassion, commitment, and generosity turned this hospital project into a reality. You just made the lives of Asian elephants immeasurably better! 

The ivory trade is a disgusting practice that kills thousands of elephants each year.

But the NRA is lobbying AGAINST ending ivory bans. If they’re successful, it could destroy elephant populations. We can’t save elephants from extinction unless we end the ivory trade. And we can’t end the ivory trade unless we pass ivory ban legislation like the bill currently being debated in the Massachusetts legislature.

So we can’t let groups like the NRA strike down this legislation.

Elephants are experiencing nothing less than a genocide.

The demand for ivory has fueled the worst declines in Africa’s elephant population in 25 years.

Behind it all? Elephant hunters -- orchestrating the poaching and smuggling of elephants’ ivory tusks to foreign markets. They’re murdering innocent animals to yield a profit for their criminal actions.

If this senseless mass murder is permitted to continue, future generations will learn about elephants as if they were dinosaurs: amazing animals, but long extinct.

The market fueled by elephant hunters is massive. At $19 billion per year, the illegal wildlife trade ranks as the fourth most lucrative criminal activity internationally.[1]

The fallen carcass of a once-majestic elephant, tusks hacked off, is enough to show that poaching and the ivory trade is cruel commerce. But elephant hunters also work closely with organized, criminal syndicates to move and distribute animals products across the globe.

It’s a complicated, violent, and dangerous market. And it will only stop by putting an end to elephant hunting.

Elephant Database

Up to date Summary and Statistics on all Elephants in Captivity, killed or that are in the wild.

[1] International Fund for Animal Welfare | Criminal Nature -- the dangerous links between poaching and organized crime | 6.24.13