Caring for Cambodia's elephants during Covid

GlobalGIving - Caring for Cambodia’s Elephants During Covid

Report - Q2 - April-June 2022

Elephant Conservation Program

• Mobile Vet Team Project

• Limited Funding - the team responded to emergency calls to treat elephants in communities. However with limited funding this year, they were not on the road all the time, only when called. 
• A lot of the vet team's time in April was spent at EVP monitoring the newly born calf, as she had a small infection on her umbilical cord. 

• Captive Elephant Care & Rehabilitation @ the Elephant Valley Project

• Funding during the 2nd quarter of this year again primarily went to food for the elephants and the wages for the carers. We have had quite a few guests booking in over the summer, but still fundraising and donations are really what is keeping the elephants going through this time as we still have a lot of bills to pay.
• Following Gee Pael (Pearl) giving birth to a healthy baby girl which we have named Gee Pech (Diamond) on 25th March 2022 at ELIE's Elephant Valley Project Sanctuary in Mondulkiri, Cambodia, we have been having a lot of fun watching her grow and explore her forest world in the first few months. Mum is doing well and bub has a small infection on her umbilical cords area, but healed well. She is settling in well, but the other older girls in the herd are still unsure of this energetic bundle running around. We are using some funding to continue to boost feed mumma Pearl as she needs extra calories to produce all that nutritious milk for baby Diamond.
• All the other elephants are getting through the beginning of the wet season fairly well. Some of the older elephants have dropped a bit of weight with the rains. This year it has been extremely wet, and we expect quite a harsh winter. Our weekly food budget for the elephants is close to $1000, so all funds generated this quarter went to paying community suppliers and wages for the staff on site who deliver extra food to the elephants each day.

• Natural Resource Protection Project 

• Funding for forest rangers - The Mobile Vet team together with local staff and community members also spent a lot of time throughout April and May monitoring the movement of wild elephants in our area. They spent a lot of time near our community forest this year. We also employed local forest night guards to be based at the EVP, as we had guests return this year and we wanted to be safe. This provided local employment but also helped guests feel safe.
• Community Forest - Rice Compensation for elephant forest
  Support for elephants to graze in the forest - funded by World Animal Protection and the Simpson Family & WAVE in Canada. Continued 30kg of rice support per month per family for 78 indigenous families who own the forest where our elephants reside. This support is crucial particularly in times of difficulty, for example the last two years of the pandemic.

Ecotourism Program

• Elephant Valley Project 

• By funding the care for the elephants and the staff at the EVP, we were able to keep the site open to host many more guests this year and generate more of the much needed funds to continue operations. We hosted our Elephant Ecology University Course in the month of June and started to get school groups and visitors joining over the summer. 
• With the onset of Covid in 2020 our monthly budget and income from ecotourism was slashed, we continue to pay back the backlog of expenses caused by that initial few months. For this your help is so important.

Community Support Program

• Health Care Support Project

• On Hold - no funds

• School Support Project

• On Hold - no funds

• Community Development Project

• On Hold - no funds