Help Save the Elephants

Throughout Africa and Asia, elephants are being slaughtered and their homelands are being destroyed at alarming rates. The number of African elephants has plummeted from over 10 million in the early 1900s to probably less than about 700,000 today (some say about 300,000), most of which are in Southern Africa, and there are only about 35,000-23,000 elephants in all of Asia alive today (half of which are in captivity). Ninety percent of Central Africa’s elephants have been destroyed (now less than 50,000), and the greatest holocaust continues there today.*

The main reasons for the decline in population are: 1) increasing human encroachment on the elephants’ habitat, 2) culling (killing to control population growth within human-made boundaries), and 3) poaching for meat and ivory. Tens of thousands of elephants are killed annually just for the Asian market alone. The killing must stop, or we will soon find a world without elephants, a tragedy beyond imagination. Yet many governments continue to cull, and the illegal trading of ivory and meat continues unabated.

Elephants are under siege everywhere they are found. Their declining numbers are a reflection of a world out of balance and a clarion call for humanity to pay attention. Elephants need increased understanding and tolerance from we humans. Through deepening our connection with them and opening our hearts to them, we may eventually be able to return to peaceful co-existence with them. These are gentle giants who simply want to be respected, honored for who they are and left in peace.

We invite you to please join our prayer circle today. And please browse our other pages here, which are full of ways to get involved in helping the elephants.

*Population count sources include: www.wildlifedirect.org

Elephant Immuno-Contraception

One week I went to Durban on business and on my return was surprised to see all seven elephants outside the house, waiting expectantly as if part of a reception committee. I put it down to coincidence. But it happened again after the next trip, and the next. It soon became obvious that somehow they knew exactly when I was away and when I was coming back.

Then it got … well, spooky. I was at the airport in Johannesburg and missed my flight home. Back at Thula Thula, 400 miles away, the herd was on their way up to the house when, as I was later told, they suddenly halted, turned around and retreated into the bush. We later worked out that this happened at exactly the same time as I missed my flight.

The next day they were back at the house as I arrived.

I soon accepted that there was something extremely unusual about all this; something that transcended the limited realm of my understanding. What has been scientifically proven is elephants’ incredible communication ability. As I had learned, elephants transmit infrasound vibrations vast distances. These ultra-low frequencies, which cannot be detected by the human ear, oscillate at similar wavelengths to those transmitted by whales; vibrations that some believe quaver across the globe.

But even if those wavelengths only vibrate for hundreds of square miles, which is now generally accepted in the scientific community, it still means elephants are potentially in contact with each other across the African continent. One herd speaks with a neighbouring herd, which in turn connects with another until you have conduits covering their entire habitat, just as you or I would have a long-distance telephone call. (pages 154-155)

The world, with all its different kingdoms, was once in balance. And it can be again. Humans, as stewards of all the kingdoms on the planet, have a deep responsibility to help restore balance to the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms. How do we begin to do this?

Albert Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Most conservation arrangements are a band-aid for buying time, because human consciousness is not ready to conceive of creating something that is truly sustainable and balanced. The reason for this is that the “human kingdom” itself is the most out of balance of all. The often unseen reason that we are out of balance is our state of separation from the Spirit-force that animates all of life and the physical world in which we live. It has the effect of separating us from all the kingdoms of the natural world even though they are all around us.

Until a major shift in consciousness happens towards our remembering our original state of Oneness with Source and our kinship with the natural world, kinship that we once knew long ago, there is very little chance we can solve our problems and create harmony, balance and coherence for our world once again.

Transforming the imbalances of our beautiful outer world begins with each one of us coming into integrity within ourselves. As we open our hearts and humbly pray for change within ourselves as well as in the outer world, shifts happen, helping to manifest the return to health, beauty and balance that we all seek for the world.

If we turn to Spirit by praying for the welfare of the elephants and also by asking how we ourselves can return to balance, there is no doubt that help will be given. You do not have to know how balance will manifest, you just have to ask for it to be given, and the way will be shown.