Today is a special day for the world's elephants; it's Save the Elephant Day!
Elephants are one of the most majestic and well-loved animals in the animal kingdom. There are no other animals that are quite like these gentle giants.
Elephants are intelligent and experience the same emotions that we humans experience. The emotions that elephants experience include compassion, grief, joy, fear, sadness, love and distress. These are all emotions that every person has experienced, therefore, it helps us to relate to elephants and what they feel.
What Is Save The Elephant Day?
Save the Elephant Day happens on the 16th of April every year.
It is a day to raise awareness about elephants and the challenges and threats that these beautiful animals face in the modern world.
The biggest threat that elephants face today is poaching. Elephants are poached for their ivory. It was estimated that in 2018 that around 22,000 African elephants were being killed every year for there ivory - that's 55 elephants killed every day. This only includes African elephants and not Asian elephants.
A major reason why elephants are declining today is due to poaching. Poaching is probably the biggest threat to their existence, but, there are also other threats that elephants face which threaten their existence. These other threats include things like habitat loss and things like avocado farms.
Poaching and habitat loss threaten to cause the extinction of these beautiful and unique animals. Just a few weeks ago, the IUCN reclassified the conservation status of two different elephant species - African savanna elephants are now an endangered species and African forest elephants are critically endangered.
Stopping poaching and habitat loss is critical to saving elephants. This Save the Elephant Day reminds us that elephants face threats in the wild and they are slowly slipping towards extinction, we have to act today if we want to save them for the future. Elephants deserve a place in this world the same way that we do.
Comments