Surrounded by a burgeoning human population, Asian elephants have to contend with the spread of settlements and farming, and the demands of rapidly developing nations: plantations, mines, railways, and irrigation canals have carved up former wilderness. Saving elephants against this backdrop is an uphill struggle, particularly in impoverished regions where reconciling their needs with those of local people is difficult. Lasting solutions can only be found by working at all levels of society, with small subsistence communities, as well as governments and major corporations.

By hosting Elephant Parade London 2010 in partnership with Elephant Parade Ltd, the UK charity Elephant Family brought the plight of the Asian elephant to the attention of Londoners and put a smile on their faces by displaying more than 250 brightly painted elephant sculptures over a two-month period. This provided the vehicle it needed to launch its campaign, with the public signing a petition to encourage governments to provide more initiative and investment to save the Asian elephant (http://www.elephantfamily.org/sign-our-petition).

With at least half of the world’s remaining Asian elephants in India, many of Elephant Family’s funds are invested here, particularly in securing wildlife corridors – the traditional migration routes of elephants – to maintain the vital connections between these reserves and other forest patches. This is seen as the number one priority for saving Asian elephants, in a process that usually entails purchasing vital corridor land, and facilitating the resettlement of villagers away from the danger zone where they come into conflict with elephants. With the provision of new, good quality housing and agricultural land, the villagers receive an attractive resettlement package. But this, together with the purchase of land, does incur a very high cost, and therefore available funds are being rapidly mopped up, drastically limiting the scale of NGOs’ impact.

Elephant Family is therefore looking at what alternatives there may be to keep costs to a minimum, and wonders to what extent the Government could intervene at any step of the way; particularly as once fully secured, the ownership of the corridor land is transferred to the state wildlife department, so that it can then be awarded protected status.

Fortunately, the Indian Government is very proactive when it comes to elephant conservation, and just last month the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) published the report of the Elephant Task Force, entitled Gajah: Securing the Future for Elephants in India. This outlines numerous recommendations for saving the Asian elephant, the implementation of which is estimated to cost up to the equivalent of £80 million over a five year period. This is the scale of intervention that is truly required to save the Asian elephant, and, for example, one of its recommendations for securing corridors is that “Fund [sic.] from other sources like CAMPA [Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority], could be utilized for purchasing corridor land and this may be given as a priority suggestion to the states by MoEF”.

However, with so many competing demands, the Indian Government should be encouraged and supported to see through its recommendations. Other Asian elephant range states should likewise be encouraged and supported to implement and/or develop their plans for saving elephants. Ultimately, an international, coordinated effort is required to ensure that there is still space for Asian elephants while economic interests are being met. This means that even non-range state countries must guarantee that their overseas business interests do not jeopardise the elephants’ future, while also providing more investment to secure vital habitat. The Asian elephant must not be allowed to go extinct through public ignorance and governmental apathy