Luckily, there are many groups working to save elephants. For example, Heart of Ganesh is working to protect elephants by planting orange trees. While this might sound like a non sequitur, Heart of Ganesh has actually figured out a way to promote peace between humans and elephants across Sri Lanka by planting citrus trees.
Rather than placing blame on any one group or community for the plight of elephants, Heart of Ganesh chooses to promote understanding, education and raising awareness to alleviate tension between people and elephants. They feel that educating people and empowering them to make compassionate choices is the perfect way to help both wild and captive elephants around the globe.
The Beginning of Heart of Ganesh
It all began with a beautiful temple elephant named Ganga. Sundari SitaRam, the founder of Heart of Ganesh, came across a video of Ganga online and was shocked. She saw the little elephant, miserable at a temple, as people filed past ignoring her completely.
“[I thought] Why doesn’t somebody DO something about this?” SitaRam tells One Green Planet. “The moment the sun rose the next morning, I knew my life was about to forever and irrevocably change. That morning I started the process to sell the yoga center that had formed the core of my life for over 10 years and began pricing plane tickets to places like Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Sri Lanka.”
After spending a month researching and volunteering in Thailand, she traveled to Sri Lanka where she finally met the elephant that changed her life.
“She was chained by her front right and back left legs, confined on urine-drenched bricks, unable to turn around or even see the traffic that roared behind her, and had no free access to water, rest, or even companionship from another elephant,” describes SitaRam to One Green Planet. “I suffered an absolute crisis of disbelief the moment I saw her that haunted me for the better part of the 2014. I tried to turn away. I wanted to turn away. But as I spent hour after hour watching people watch her and picturing her there day after day, year after year, chained and alone, there simply was no turning back.”
Empowering Communities, Protecting Elephants
At the beginning of her time in Sri Lanka, SitaRam worked closely with the Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Center, SLWCC. Some of their work focuses on resolving human-elephant conflict by taking care of people. Raising the socio-economic status of villagers will allow them to make choices that are more compassionate.
In places like Sri Lanka, human-elephant conflict is rampant. In fact, according to SitaRam, every week at least three elephants will die and one human will lose their life as a direct result of this conflict. As resources become scarce and elephant habitats become more limited, the conflict is expected to only get worst. Elephants regularly destroy the only livelihood these people have, their farms and homes. In response, people fight off elephants, sometimes killing the elephants, sometimes dying in the process. Figuring out a solution to harmoniously living sounds easy, but takes more creativity and hard work than we would ever expect.
“Humans … We are the largest challenge facing Asian elephants,” explains SitaRam, “That’s the bad news. The good news is, we are also the only hope for saving them.”
In their first year, Heart of Ganesh joined with SLWCC and printed human-elephant conflict resolution brochures in several languages, distributing them to farmers. This was a fantastic and effective way to begin to educate the people dealing with elephants the most.
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