This week’s 7 Questions is quite exciting for us. Do you remember our Elephant Outfits post from a couple weeks ago? Well, we found the whole thing so exciting we approached Wildlife SOS to see if they’d like to discuss it further. And here’s the exciting bit, THEY DID! We caught up with Mr. Kartick Satyanarayan, Co-Founder & Chairman Wildlife SOS to find out a bit more about what they do.
1. When was the sanctuary founded, and how was it funded?
The Wildlife SOS Elephant Conservation & Care Centre (ECCC) was founded in 2010 and is funded entirely by donations.
No, not all our animals need special outfits. The rescued elephants require special care as they have come to us from deplorable conditions and have special needs.
The biggest obstacle is usually to find committed staff who are willing to make sacrifices for the sake of the animals and financial resources for the ongoing medical treatment, feeding of elephants and other animals in our care. You can also listen to Ms. Geeta Seshamani talk about how Wildlife SOS came into being and the problems they faced in the video below.
Our organisation is responsible for taking action against animal cruelty, rescuing wildlife in distress, working to resolve man-animal conflicts while promoting and educating the public about the need for habitat protection. Although Wildlife SOS is mainly known for its work with the “Dancing Bears” of India, we also have active projects to help Leopards, Elephants, Reptiles and other animals.We run two Elephant Care Centres in Mathura & Haryana, with 23 rescued elephants under our care currently and our leopard rescue centre in Maharashtra houses 27 rescued and rehabilitated leopards. We also have 6 Himalayan black bears at our Dachigam and Pahalgam centres in Jammu & Kashmir. Additionally, our teams across India rescue over a thousand animals, birds and reptiles from distress situations every year.You can watch this heartwarming recovery made by our rescued elephant, Lakhi here;
or watch how Halloween was celebrated at our centres here:
or watch Valentine’s day being celebrated with the bears:
5. Whose idea was it to knit outfits for elephants, and how much wool did you need?
The need to keep the elephants warm motivated us to design and make jackets for the elephants as a pilot project. You can watch a video of the elephants being helped into their jackets on the video below:
6. How can people get involved and help?
Wildlife SOS encourages volunteers to come and help us in various ways. People from all walks of life connect with us by emailing us on volunteer@wildlifesos.org and work with us on our projects.
Curiosity brings volunteers and they leave fulfilled and involved with Wildlife SOS. We fulfil our role of conservation education through our volunteer outreach program. You can also make donations to Wildlife SOS website to help support our rescued animals: https://give.wildlifesos.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1971&ea.campaign.id=52550
7. What’s next on the agenda?
Our upcoming projects include the establishment of an international elephant hospital, expansion of the elephant conservation and care centres, human wildlife conflict mitigation, wildlife research and forest restoration projects. We look forward to welcoming and involving volunteers into our projects.
