Dear Friends and Associates,

We are looking forward to World Elephant Day 2017 and appreciate you being part of this annual celebration of the elephants on Saturday, August 12!

This year there are numerous public events around the globe on or near August 12. Two of them in particular we’d like to shout out here:

• On August 3 Wildlife Conservation Society will be conducting an ivory crush of nearly two tons of ivory (value US$8 million) in Manhattan and will use that to launch ten days of elephant messaging that carries us to World Elephant Day.

• Elephants DC is hosting the Fifth Annual International March for Elephants in Washington DC on August 12.

And there are more events being posted every day.  We hope you are planning informative and interactive events as well, to trumpet your love of the elephants.  Please post any events that you’re organizing on the “Elevents” page of our website. 

Our new beautiful World Elephant Day T-Shirts are now available in our Store. These wonderful designs are created by Animalia Collective in support of World Elephant Day.   Also in our Store you’ll find the documentary film “When Elephants Were Young”, the moving, story of a young man and a young elephant living in Thailand that portrays the issues impacting Asian elephants, and conservation solutions. 

Proceeds from sales of all Store items are donated to World Elephant Society, our umbrella organization that manages the annual World Elephant Day campaign. 

We at World Elephant Society work to educate the global public about the plight of elephants and the conservation solutions required to ensure their survival. We rely on your continuing support to raise awareness about the threats to elephants, and what we can all do to save them from extinction.  Please donate to support our efforts to keep this awareness building for World Elephant Day, and every day, and help us bring the world together to help elephants. 

Our last newsletter contained a section of a letter to an elephant, written by French writer Romaine Gary (1914–1980), and published in LIFE magazine fifty years ago.  Here is a continuation of that letter:

    “Years later, somewhere in Sudan, we met again. I was returning from a bombing mission over Ethiopia, and brought down my damaged plane south of Khartoum, on the western bank of the Nile. I walked for three days to reach water and to have the most satisfying drink of my life, thus, as it turned out later, contracting typhoid and almost dying. You appeared before me among some meager acacia trees, and at first I thought I was a victim of hallucination.

     I took a step in your direction then another. . . . For a man as utterly tired as I was, there was something strangely reassuring about your huge, rocklike sight. I knew that if I could touch you, caress you, lean against you, you would give me some of your life force. It was one of those moments when a man needs so much energy and so much strength to overcome and to prevail that he thinks of God.  I have never been able to raise my eyes that high, and so I stop at elephants.”

Sincerely,

Patricia Sims, Co-Founder World Elephant Day, President World Elephant Society

Anne Dillon, Communications Director World Elephant Society