The Elephant Sanctuary

It's become a holiday season tradition for B and I to choose one charity to be mini-fundraisers for each year. Last year we chose the local branch of the excellent School on Wheels. By asking all the guests to our holiday party to consider donating cash or school supplies we were able to give a small cash donation and a pretty impressive collection of school supplies.

This year the charity we've chosen isn't local but it's very near and dear to my heart. The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee, is the nation's largest natural-habitat refuge developed specifically to meet the needs of endangered elephants. It is designed specifically for old, sick or needy elephants who have been retired from zoos and circuses. The sanctuary has 2700 acres of land. It's this large size that actually allows the elephants to live like elephants. They don't perform, they aren't forced into small, uncomfortable pens or displays. They don't have to do much of anything besides things they would normally be doing in a natural elephant habitat (eating, lots and lots of walking, playing, socializing with other elephants, etc).

So I encourage you to spend a little of your holiday dollars on The Elephant Sanctuary. You can send a direct contribution or you can choose an elephant to feed for a day or you can buy much needed supplies off their wishlist.

From the sanctuary's website

The Elephant Sanctuary exists for two reasons:

To provide a haven for old, sick or needy elephants in a setting of green pastures, old-growth forests, spring-fed ponds and a heated barn for cold winter nights.

To provide education about the crisis facing these social, sensitive, passionately intense, playful, complex, exceedingly intelligent and endangered creatures.

Elephants have been my favorite animals for as long as I can remember. They are magical to me. It broke my heart to read this very long NY Times article called An Elephant Crackup? It details the remarkably human characteristics elephants have (or perhaps more accurately the elephant characteristics that humans have), and talks about the horrible things humans are doing to elephants and what the elephants are trying to do to survive. It's from that article that I first learned about The Elephant Sanctuary. I did a good amount of research on The Elephant Sanctuary and on the plight of elephants in zoos. I know that I'm sounding like a touchy-feeling, namby pansy but I can't help it, I can no longer visit or support zoos that provide absolutely unacceptable habitats for elephants and other large animals. Keeping an animal that roams 30km a day in the wild in a 100x100 feet pen is animal cruelty that I don't want to be a part of. I've long been opposed to circuses for similar reasons but now zoos are on my radar as well.

A few links of interest

Are Zoos Killing Elephants?
Save Elephants in Zoos
The Elephant Protection Project