![The Pregnant Elephant Died Standing in the Lake]()
The Pregnant Elephant Died Standing in the Lake
Dear friends:
More than ever before we need your help to cross the finish line! There's some good and bad news. Let me start with the good news...
We're partnering with a grassroots, credible organization in India which has people who understand what's happening on the ground. Additionally, we've identified a reliable person in Kerala to monitor the land that we will provide, to ensure that it's exclusively used for wildlife. Essentially, our partner in India will work with the forest department to support them in transforming the plantation land into forestland, and plant native and endemic species --- this would be our next step.
But in the meantime, I have some bad news for you. Elephants are being murdered at an unprecedented rate in India. The COVID crisis, exacerbating poverty, anger, resentment and frustration --- rootcause? Human population growth --- are all escalating human elephant conflict.
So here's the bad news!!
June 15, 2020: A bull elephant was murdered in Odisha!! A bullet-ridden body of a male elephant was found in Mundeswara reserve forest under Madhapur forest range in Boudh district on June 15th. The poachers were unable to extract the two tusks of the male elephant that is suspected to have been killed two to three days back, the eyewitnesses added.
June 13, 2020: The latest victims are two elephants, including a tusker, whose tusks had been sawed off! Although the exact cause of their deaths will be revealed after the post mortem, poisoning and poaching is suspected! It happened in the Joda forest of the Keonjhar district of Odisha. Apparently the elephants had strayed into the villages in the Gurubahi forest reserve where people have occupied the land.
June 12, 2020: An elephant calf was found dead in the Kuanrmunda forest range in Sundargarh district. The Kuarmunda ranger and Kalunga forester have received a "show-cause notice" for allegedly suppressing the incident. Meanwhile, the criminals are still at large!!
June 10, 2020: Three young female elephants were poisoned to death in Chhattisgarh. One of them was about to give birth to a baby in just a couple of months. And a body of a third elephant was found in Rajpur, in North Chattisgarh
May 27, 2020: A pregnant elephant was killed as she meandered near a plantation near Palakkad, Kerala, after she consumed a coconut laden with illegal and dangerous explosives which exploded in her mouth. After suffering for 15 days, and standing inside a lake to cool off, her suffering finally ended - she died standing in the water!! Three weeks later, the plantation owners are still absconding, although a worker was arrested as a scapegoat!!
But you can be part of the solution. Please help us create this long overdue corridor, that can help us alleviate human elephant conflict: Please click HERE to help us finish the crossline!! http://bit.ly/2lWqnLZ
THE IMPERATIVE TO PROTECT ELEPHANTS: Elephants are endangered and a keystone species. They are vital not only for the survival of forest ecosystems and other living beings, but also, for our own survival. They disperse seeds in their dung, and these seeds then become trees that in turn give us oxygen to breathe, necessary for our survival and take up CO2, purifying the air. They are THE only seed disperses that dump so much and disperse so many seeds over long distances. Most of these seeds are whole, because elephants mostly swallow, and seldom chew, unlike the cows that regurgitate and ruminate. If elephants are gone many trees will also disappear.
What's more, elephants are also climate mitigators because they trample the soft wooded trees, allowing sunlight and rain to penetrate into the woods. This allows hard wooded trees to thrive! And these trees absorb more carbon-di-oxide from the atmosphere, one of the pollutants exacerbating climate change. The demise of elephants would be a colossal loss for the forest ecosystems that will disintegrate and eventually collapse.
Aside from all these amazing benefits to so many species of our planet, and of course people, elephants are considered to be the EMBODIMENT OF LORD GANESH!! Is this how we treat India's cultural icon, and heritage animal that had been granted a Schedule 1 status, and declared an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)?
Additionally, India has stringent wildlife and animal welfare laws, as well as regulations for explosives, and materials used to make explosives. But sadly, they are not being enforced, nor even implemented!
The foundation of India's culture is AHIMSA, COMPASSION, and LOVE for ALL BEINGS!! Our DHARMA includes protecting all living beings, including humans and nonhumans. It's UTTERLY SHAMEFUL!! WHAT HAD THESE ELEPHANTS DONE TO DESERVE THIS?
Humanity must come together to end this senseless massacre of elephants in India!! People with business skills, social media skills, marketing skills need to come together. I'm a filmmaker, a biologist and broadcast journalist. If you're interested to volunteer we desperately need people to manage our marketing campaign, as well as coordinate a few things. Please email support@vfaes.org if you're interested. You see, there's no point in having all the money, if our nonhuman brothers and sisters are gone? They have so much intrinsic value that most people don't understand.
Please click HERE to help us finish the crossline!! http://bit.ly/2lWqnLZ
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