Where your money goes
Where your money goes
The Asian Elephant Foundation (TAEF) is legally established as a registered the Netherlands (#51207508 at the Amsterdam Chamber of Commerce). TAEF receives donations from private individuals and other 3rd parties. The Elephant Parade is the main sponsor of the Asian Elephant Foundation. The Elephant parade is the world’s largest open air art exhibition in aid of the Asian elephant. Prior to the founding of The Asian Elephant Foundation, funds raised by Elephant Parade or by using the concept of Elephant Parade were distributed directly to the various projects and through Elephant Family. Nowadays the Asian Elephant Foundation distributes all these funds.
The Asian Elephant Foundation supports various projects and organizations throughout Asia, varying from (mobile) elephant hospitals to developing solutions for human-elephant conflicts, and thus supporting the wellbeing and the conservation of the Asian elephant. The Board of TAEF is operational since second half 2011. The first applications for funds have been received, and so far 7 projects have been accepted for support. We are open for new applications.
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1. Friends of the Asian Elephant (FAE), Thailand
In 1993, Soraida Salwala founded the first Elephant Hospital in the world, located in Lampang (Thailand). Her Foundation, Friends of the Asian Elephant (FAE), nurtures elephants that have been injured by stepping on landmines, in traffic, that are sick or have been abused by humans. With her team of 15 people, Soraida has treated over 2,300 elephants since the start of her hospital: “We have to protect them from all kinds of danger and the elephants need to be taken care of, sometimes for the rest of their lives”. Soraida is very happy with the support of Elephant Parade: “Without Elephant Parade, I don't think our elephants would survive.” FAE and ‘Mobile Vet Projects’ work united to help sick injured elephants from all regions of the country and take care of expecting mothers. December 2011 The Asian Elephant Foundation made the funds available to buy a new vehicle to help many patients out of the hospital, mostly in the northern region. Next to this, TAEF structurally supports the Elephant Hospital with a sum of 1,000,000 Thai baht yearly (around and about € 25,000), which enables FAE to guarantee durable care for the elephants.
In co-operation with the Lao National Animal Health Centre, ElefantAsia implements free veterinary treatment for working elephants suffering from illness or injury via their Mobile Veterinary Units. Vehicles especially adapted for the treatment of elephants in remote areas visit logging sites, tourism centres and villages where elephants are employed. It provides advice to mahouts on basic care and medicines. The “Lao Captive Elephant Care and Management Programme” mobile veterinary units carry out approximately 20 national field missions per annum with an additional 15-20 emergency missions within the same timeframe. To date the units have undertaken over 1000 veterinary checks.
Presently, the Asian elephants remaining in the wild are distributed across 13 countries. The habitat loss and degradation is widely recognized as the primary threat to the survival of the Asian elephant by various activities like human encroachment, settlement, rail lines, national highways etc. The habitat fragmentation leaves the Asian elephant population into several fragmented areas in Assam (India). In the present scenario it is difficult to maintain sufficient contiguous elephant habitat. The knowledge of different elephant population and the forest corridor which facilitate the gene flow and the population genetic structure and the distinctiveness of populations are important for the conservation of Asian elephants in Assam.
This is why Manas National Park will conduct a survey of the distribution of free living elephants in the north-east of India. The results of the survey are expected to help the Indian government with the management of elephant populations, including establishing corridors where they are most needed.
The project is looking for ways to minimize the human-elephant conflict and ensuring the protection of elephants, human lives and property. The project is also aiming at making the general public aware of the human-elephant conflict and the mitigation actions. In order to reach these goals four discussion forums will be conducted in different parts of the country in order to facilitate discussions and develop practical and enhancing methods to deal with this problem. At the same time a knowledge sharing workshop with government authorities and active working groups will be organized about human rights and environment conservation in mitigation and finding a best practice over the human-elephant conflict.
The project will support the participation of local communities in the protection of Asian elephants and other globally threatened wildlife in and around Rakhine Yoma Elephant Sanctuary (RYES). The project will support the negotiation of a new incentive agreement that incorporates the results and feedback from previous agreements. It will also train Chin and RYES staff in elephant surveys and support the participation of villagers from three communities in joint patrols with RYES staff. Further the project will support anti-wildlife trade and human-elephant conflict mitigation by testing innovative and locally appropriate solutions.
The project builds on the past four years of work negotiating incentive agreements with one Chin ethnic minority community, totaling 110 people, living south of RYES which has an estimates wildlife population of 150 elephants, Myanmar’s second largest elephant range. The Chin migrated here in 2002-2003 from northern Rakhine Yoma and now pose a major threat to RYES. In addition to the Chin community, the project will negotiate agreements with two more communities, totaling another 150 people who are plantation laborers of mixed Chin-Burman ethnicity. They are landless and having seen the benefits of previous phases of this project, are keen to participate. The major incentives are rice supplements, establishments of government-recognized forest plantations, support for children’s education, and water supply. The local Forest Department has promised to allocate the forest land and issue the tenure certificate. The goal of the project is to continue to enhance the effectiveness of community-based elephant conservation in the southern Rakhine Yoma.
MTE owns over 2800 captive elephants. Over 2500 of those elephants are working with logging, baggage carrying and transport for MTE. This fund is meant to enable the MTE veterinarians to buy and fully equip a mobile clinic for health service of these 2500 elephants. But to get a new car in Myanmar or to get a new car in Myanmar from Thailand is a very difficult and time consuming job, especially as we want to avoid tax rates of 135% on the purchase of the car. In the mean time the people involved have managed to purchase the car, and as soon as it will be rebuild into a Mobile Clinic and registered in Myanmar it can start being a essential support for the local vets!
- 7. Special donation for project Sabah (Kinabatangan), Malaysia, fully financed from the proceeds on the statue of His Royal Highness, the Prince Consort of Denmark
Elephant Parade and The Asian Elephant Foundation want to give a huge thanks to His Royal Highness, the Prince Consort of Denmark who was our Elephant Parade Copenhagen 2011 Patron and one of the top artists! The full proceeds for this statue, a amount of € 25,000, was donated to a project in Sabah (Kinabatangan), Maleysia. The main goal of this project is to manage human-elephant conflicts in palm oil plantations in Central Sabah Managed Elephant Range. To achieve this goal, the project focuses on three objectives:
- To rescue and translocate elephants from palm oil plantations to the Central Sabah Managed Elephant Range;
- To set up satellite collars on the translocated elephants to understand the movements and migratory patterns of these individuals within and outside the plantation areas;
- To develop and implement elephant mitigation guidelines for the palm oil plantations.
The outcomes will definitely contribute to elephant welfare and provide alternatives to elephant s caught in palm oil plantations. Furthermore we will have a better understanding of elephant movements and migratory patterns for better management of the population and the landscape and be able to identify elephant corridors within a mosaic landscape of agriculture and forest. This way project management can suggest migration routes within the palm oil estates, which can be converted in elephant corridors and therefore contribute to the conservation of the species. Last but not least public awareness about the conservation of the Bornean elephant and the issue of human-elephant conflict will be increased.
The special donation of € 25,000 is used for the acquisition of 4 satellite collars as well as staff time for part of the planned extension of the program for one year.
A wonderful project which uses high tech solutions by Iridium to safeguard the future of the Asian elephants!