Caring for Cambodia's elephants during Covid

GlobalGIving - Caring for Cambodia’s Elephants During Covid

Report - Q3-Q4 - July-December 2022

Elephant Conservation Program

• Mobile Vet Team Project
• With the easing of COVID restrictions and infections, our mobile team of two have increased their visits to remote villages to conduct health checks on elephants. This includes measuring and estimating their weights, assessing any injuries and checking their eyes, ears, limbs, feet and skin quality for sores. 
• Our mobile team have also checked on elephants in Memong and Koh Neak villages. 

• Captive Elephant Care & Rehabilitation @ the Elephant Valley Project
• Funding during the last half of this year primarily went to the elephants' food and the caregivers' wages. We have had quite a few guests booking in over the summer, but fundraising and donations keep the elephants going through this time, as we still have a lot of bills to back pay from the gaps created due to the pandemic
• We are continuing to provide extra food for Gee Pael (Pearl) following the birth of her daughter Gee Pech (Diamond) in March 2022. We are boosting her feed to ensure she produces all that nutritious milk for baby Diamond. Diamond is an absolute sweetheart learning from her mother and NingWan as they explore the jungle breaking trees and bamboo to chew on. She is warming nicely to her new mahout Vinh.
• Half of the year's funding has been allocated to supporting Cambodia's most famous elephant, Sambo. She is getting older (60+ yrs), and given her years on the streets of Phnom Penh eating excess amounts of sugar and human food; Sambo has developed a tooth infection in the last 6 months. We have modified her diet to help her feed with softer food like rice, banana, sweet potato and tamarind. Funding support ensures we can give Sambo the best quality of life as she ages. 
• This period also brought about our colder months, where additional food and medications were needed for our older elephants, MaeNang, GeeNowl, NingWan and Sambo. 
• Our beautiful bull elephant, Hen, is continuing to recover well. The rainy season wasn't too challenging; however he will be on a lifelong treatment program and daily rehabilitation program for his dislocated hip since the 2021 incident with a wild bull elephant. 

• Natural Resource Protection Project 
• Our Community Forest Rice Compensation program was initially supported by World Animal Protection, the Simpson Family & WAVE in Canada until July 2022. We are incredibly grateful for a new partner, Cloud Forest, who are starting a program with us to support this program and also for community land rights issues. Additional funding is required to keep all 78 indigenous families receiving 30kg of rice per month per family who own the forest where our elephants reside. This support is crucial mainly in times of difficulty, for example, the last two years of the pandemic. Additional funding is also needed for forest rangers.
  

Ecotourism Program

• Elephant Valley Project 
• We were thrilled to welcome back school & college groups, with the first being part of the World Challenge Program. This was a challenge in itself as the base camp was quite run down and we needed to get it up and ready to accommodate all the 15-18-year-olds students; however, they provided a much-needed injection of manual labour toward projects such as planting bamboo and reforestation in preparation for the rainy season. Your support enables students to be educated, enriched and inspired to transform the lives of our Asian Elephants as they live out their days. 
• Guests are returning, with a lot of time being spent on rebuilding base camp and trails. With limited staffing resources, we are paying local additional local community members for their help. 
• Getting the site back up and operational also enables us to host training programs such as hosting WWF to train their local forest rangers on identifying and tracking wild elephants in their regions across Cambodia. Your continued support enables the sanctuary to do bigger and better things beyond our EVP boundaries. 
• We hosted our first two interns post covid, who came all the way out here from the kindness of their hearts for 3 month placements - Thanks Myrna and Jonas.

Community Support Program

• Health Care Support Project

• Due to funding shortage our major health support program is still on hold, but we are starting to support the health centre in the village for basic health access for the community.

• School Support Project

• On Hold - no funds. But we were able to support our first Community School Enrolment Drive since covid, motivating children and families to get children to school again/for the first time.

• Community Development Project

• On Hold - no funds