During Asian Elephant Awareness Month 2020 AES sent out an eBlast highlighting some of its work in Sumatra:
We at AES have TONS of LOVE for Asian elephants and the people who work with and live among them in their native ranges, including in SUMATRA 🏴.
Our collaboration with Sumatra 🏴 has passed the decade mark and over the years we have supplied two portable scales for veterinarians to weigh elephants , helped with emergency funds for supplemental fodder during a couple of serious droughts . We have supported educational opportunities by assisting with mahout workshops and sending three Sumatran 🏴 mahouts to African Lion Safari in Canada to learn from their master training and husbandry program. We have helped fund fencing for elephants to have time to freely socialize when not working to wells so that they could quench their thirst when drought dried up natural water sources. There have been rescues when funding was needed to move a young adult bull from a bad situation to helping with formula and medicines for calves that sometimes get separated from their herds.
Our recent assistance was funding a GPS collaring project in 2019 to track the movements of herds of wild elephants to better understand how it may be more possible for elephants and humans to co-exist when the land both use overlaps. Due to the pandemic this project was delayed but has now been done and 6 elephants have been successfully collared in Way Kambas National Park. And COVID-19 has AES helping again with emergency funding to Tangkahan Conservation Response Unit as their eco-tourism income totally dried up. We also supplied initial funds to help set up a new Elephant Response Unit in Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park and then emergency funding to cover the delay of their longer-term financing being put in place, again the result of the pandemic.
A lot of good work has been done in Sumatra 🏴 by amazing people for Asian elephants - work that other range countries have looked to as a model for improving their care and conservation of Asian elephants.
We thank YOU for your support that has made all of this possible. YOU really have made a difference for both captive and wild elephants !
