Volunteer with Elephants

Elephants are herbivores, sustaining their incredible size and stature with a considerable amount of grasses, leaves, bamboo, bark, roots and sometimes crops.  Their mating seasons largely fall during the rainy season with gestation period stretching to around 22 months.  When the calf is born, the whole herd moves to protect and raise the new addition.  The young elephant is taken under their wings for around 5 years before it is weaned from care.

Like their memory, elephants have a long lifespan.  The average age is around 50-70 years.   Elephants are also a crucial part of our ecosystems.  For example, during dry spells, elephants use their tusks to dig deep for water which helps animals without such tools to survive the droughts.  They also create gaps in vegetation through which smaller animals can then pass and many trees rely on them for seed dispersal. This means, aside from elephants being loved worldwide for their beauty and intelligence, they are also an integral part of ecosystems.

• Heat radiates out of an elephants ears? They thus act as cooling mechanisms.
• In the same way that humans tend to be right-handed or left-handed, elephants can be right-tusked or left-tusked.
• Elephants have social rules too? For example, when meeting each other they expect the other elephant to extend its trunk in greeting.
• Adult elephants eat 300-400 lbs of food per day?
• An elephant’s brain weighs 5 kg? Much more than the brain of any other land animal.
• There are many reports of elephants showing altruism toward other species, such as rescuing trapped dogs at considerable cost to themselves?

The endangerment of these beautiful creatures is well known across the world and the struggle to end poaching and cruel killing of these gentle giants is not an unfamiliar plight to conservationists.  But poaching is just one of the threats that elephants face.   In addition to this, they are experiencing a loss of habitat which pushes them into conflicts with various surrounding human populations.  Our Desert Elephant Volunteer project in Namibia works to address and mitigate human-elephant conflict in local communities.

Alongside all of this, elephants also find themselves falling prey to hunting and, especially in areas across Asia, a part of cruel tourist activities and harmful practices for entertainment.  If you join our Elephant Sanctuary Volunteer Projects in Thailand and Cambodia, you can take care of elephants who have been rescued from the tourist industry and who are able to live out their retirement in peace in their natural habitats.