Elephant Voices

Category: 1. General News, Elephants in captivity, Events | Date: Nov 20 2008 | By: elephantvoices

After almost two weeks on the road with several events and fundraisers behind us, we depart from California and Los Angeles this afternoon. We’re busy packing so we don’t have time for more than a very short summary of our trip.

The tour started with a cooking party and two other events in San Francisco, continued with a joint event at PAWS in San Andreas. You can see a video from this event here, including footage of Joyce’s talk and of the responses of Ruby, Maggie, Mara and Lulu to some elephant sounds that we played to them. Their response was so strong that some people were worried that the sounds were upsetting to the girls. While it may be rare for captive elephants to react so strongly to a stimulus, the responses were very typical of wild elephants and we were able to observe a range of responses from high social excitement to fierce defence. Their response showed just what a strong leader Ruby has becomes and how tight the bonds are between the four elephants. PAWS can be extremely proud of the work they have done to facilitate the development of this family unit.

We finally had an event and fundraiser in the home of a good friend in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, on Sunday 16th November.

Georja Umano, Petter and Joyce

The last three days of our visit ended up being much more hectic than planned, mainly because of meetings and press briefings related to our involvement in discussions regarding the future of elephants, including Billy, at LA Zoo. On Tuesday Joyce participated in a press conference arranged by councilman Tony Cardenas of Los Angeles County Council. NBC Los Angeles, CBS Los Angeles and dailybreeze.com, laist and Fox LA are among the media that have covered the case. The vote was planned for Wednesday, but after 5 intense hours on the floor it has been delayed until the first week of December. (Article in LA Times here) We strongly hope the LA County Council will decide to close the exhibit and send Billy to a sanctuary. An urban zoo cannot offer the space necessary for a such a large, active, social, and intelligent animal as the elephant.

Petter, Joyce and Councilman Tony Cardenas visiting LA Zoo.

We’re extremely grateful for all the support and help we have received during our trip - it’s been exhausting but has also given us lots of new energy. We have made new friends, even some through WildlifeDirect, and hopefully created more compassion for elephants among people that we have met on our way. We look forward to keeping in touch with all of you caring for elephants.

Thanks!

Petter and Joyce

Tags: billy, elephants, elephantvoices, fundraiser, los angeles

2 responses so far

Category: 1. General News, Events, Support Appeals | Date: Nov 06 2008 | By: elephantvoices

Dear WD Visitor!

For those of you living in the US: Sandip Roy Chowdhury will be talking with Joyce Poole on “New America Now: Dispatches from the New Majority,” which airs Friday Nov 14th at 1:00 p.m. and repeats Sunday at 3:00 p.m. on KALW, 91.7 FM.

You can hear an interview with Joyce on AnimalVoices, an alternative radio in Vancouver, here. The interview with Karl Losken was aired on 31st October.

At 4 am this morning we were awoken by two alarm clocks - not wanting to risk that one would let us down. A couple of hours later we departed for our two week event and fundraising tour in California. We’re looking forward to see friends, elephant supporters and even elephants (at PAWS, where we have a joint event on Saturday 15th Nov.), while at the same time experience the excitement of an historical election. With strong roots in Kenya (and plenty of other good reasons, too) no-one should be surprised that we are happy that Barack Obama will soon be the new President of the United States of America. We are among those convinced that he will strengthen America in a way that will be good for everyone. Barack is Kiswahili for blessing and he is indeed a blessing.

Waiting at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam for our next flight, we watched another BBC news piece describing the impact of increased ivory poaching on the world’s biggest land mammal - and expressing fears that the recent ivory auctions, sanctioned by CITES, will stimulate that growing threat. More and more elephants are succumbing to poaching fueled by the ivory trade and the press needs to bring this to the world’s attention.

Despite difficult times for the financial markets around the world, and for most of us as a consequence, we are hopeful that the people we meet during our California tour will continue to support our elephant conservation work. In the coming year we will be devoting a large portion of our time to our elephant conservation project in Sri Lanka.

We are also very grateful for any contributions towards our work from WildlifeDirect visitors!

Best wishes, Petter and Joyce

Tags: behavior, behaviour, elephants, elephantvoices, Events, media, paws

One response so far