Mar
29
Adopt an Elephant
March 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Orphaned elephants at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust
Thanks to Kaye McKenzie for this link to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, to which you can contribute by adopting or fostering an orphaned elephant or rhino.
Dr. Dame Daphne Sheldrick (“the first person in the entire world to successfully hand rear newborn fully milk dependent African Elephant orphans”) explains the organization’s philosophy: “Saving wildlife and wilderness is the responsibility of all thinking people. Greed and personal gain must not be permitted to decimate, despoil and destroy the earth’s irreplaceable treasure for its existence is essential to the human spirit and the well-being of the earth as a whole. All life has just one home — the earth — and we as the dominant species must take care of it.”
You can also donate in honor of a friend, and receive a lovely watercolor of an elephant to send to your friend in place of a more traditional gift.
The site includes lots of information about elephant and rhino conservation, and an article about elephant emotion., ending with this quotation from Henry Beston, from The Outmost House, and written in 1928:
- “We need another and wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals …. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings, they are other Nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”