By Kerri McCrea – Manager & Co-Founder

12th August marks World Elephant Day, a day dedicated to the preservation and protection of the world’s elephants, something that is more important now than ever, due to the on-going crisis of the pandemic. Usually on this day, we are spreading awareness and educating our guests and volunteers about the plight of the Asian elephant, however, this year will be very different, since we have no-one onsite aside from our full-time team.

It’s been over three months since our last blog explaining our circumstances due to Covid-19, and in reality, nothing much has changed since then. We now have had no guests or volunteers for about four months, and there is no end in sight for this crisis period. The borders in Thailand remain closed to tourists as the virus continues to spread in other countries. Due to having no funds coming in through our visitor and volunteer program, we are still relying on donations to continue our work and survive this period.

There are still about 60 elephants in our area that have had to come and stay home due to the closures of the elephant camps. Although some camps have now opened for domestic tourism, there are very few tourists left in Thailand so the camps are unable to support many elephants. This means that these 60 elephants will be remaining in our area for the foreseeable future, with no income, the owners and mahouts are struggling. We are continuing to support them too as best we can, along with our own elephants and running expenses. We are also fundraising for our community, who are also feeling the strain of our continued closure and the pandemic.

With all of this in mind, we really do need your support now more than ever. There are many ways to help us over this period:
– Donate to our on-going fundraiser: https://www.simplygiving.com/appeal/help-us-continue-our-work-kses
– Sponsor an elephant: https://kselephantsanctuary.com/our-elephants/
– Donate to our homestay community: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-our-homestays-through-this-crisis-period
– Support our Etsy Shop to help the community and elephants: https://www.etsy.com/shop/KindredSpiritEles
– Book on for a future stay: https://kselephantsanctuary.com/visit/
– Book on for a future volunteer stay: https://kselephantsanctuary.com/volunteer/

As a team, we are still working hard on the ground to care for our elephants, run our community projects and continue our marketing and fundraising. Please support us this World Elephant Day and share these links with your friends. As always, our elephants will be spending the day roaming contently in the forest where they belong. We hope to continue to provide this for them.

Thank you all and together we will get through this.

Kerri & the Kindred Spirit Elephant Sanctuary team xx