Animal Works is helping spread the word about animal conservation using film, art and the written word to support several conservation projects in Africa and Asia. Read on to learn more…
Elephant Wars
A film by Animal Media Australia and Off the Fence
Twenty years on from the worldwide ban on the ivory trade, elephant populations in several African countries are now on the rise, causing some governments to reconsider culling. With more and more people and elephants competing for increasingly limited resources, a dramatic new problem has emerged that now threatens both species: human-elephant conflict.
On the other side of the world, in India, people go daily into battle with elephants, resulting in dozens of deaths on both sides. With deforestation on a massive scale, Asian elephants are running out of space and running out of time. People and elephants are now embroiled in a bitter struggle for survival, a war which neither side can win.
Elephant Dance
A story of love and war in the kingdom of elephants
Published by Pan Macmillan Australia, 2009
“This beautifully written book by young Aussie conservationist Tammie Matson tells of her fascinating work – in which chilli peppers end up playing a key role – to reduce human-elephant conflict in Namibia and later India. It includes many encounters, sometimes terrifying and sometimes heart-wrenching, with Africa’s wild animals. Elephant Dance will make you cry, then laugh, then jump, then laugh again.”
News Limited newspapers, 2009
Elephant Art
During the filming of ‘Elephant Wars’, award winning Sydney artist Nafisa Naomi documented the ‘behind the scenes’ of the documentary with her camera and sketch book. The result is 80 incredible artworks from India and Africa that demonstrate the beauty of the elephant and their plight in a modern day world.
Nafisa is donates most of the profits of her elephant art to Animal Works.
Click here to see the full collection.
Our Field Projects
A key part of what Animal Works is all about is ensuring that precious funds are directed into projects achieving real outcomes, both for local people living with wildlife, and for the wildlife itself. That’s why we don’t pay salaries to our core team, who all bring diverse skills to the table to help us raise awareness and funds for these issues. We want as much as possible of your donation to get where it’s needed. We’re small, and we plan to stay that way, because we want to make a targeted difference in the places that we work.
Rehabilitating baby elephants, the victims of human-elephant conflict
This project, run by the Wildlife Trust of India‘s Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation (CWRC) is one that is close to Tammie and Nafisa’s hearts, because they have met personally several of the orphans currently being looked after at the orphanage who are now on their long journey to be returned to the wild. Some of them have been severely injured by people attacking them or by falling into tea garden trenches or wells. Read more about the incredible stories of elephant calves separated from their herds due to the frequent human-elephant conflict in Assam and saved by the staff of the CWRC here. Several of the calves have now been returned to the wild in Manas National Park, and we keep you updated of their progress, and that of new calves at the centre, through our regular blogs from the field.
Using chillies to deter elephants & empower women
One of our newest projects is run by the Assam Haathi Project (“Haathi” means elephant in Assamese) and focuses on building capacity of local people to grow chillies and process them through micro-businesses, especially women. Chillies are an effective deterrent to elephants that have been used successfully in Africa, and now there are promising signs that this is also the case in India. Read more about their work here.
Building capacity to fight poachers in Zimbabwe
Following Tammie’s recent visit to Zimbabwe, a new partnership for Animal Works has been formed with the Save Valley Conservancy. The Save Valley Conservancy has been heavily affecting by poaching in the last decade of political instability, but the dedicated reserve managers and game scouts have kept much of the wildlife going, including rhinos and elephants, which have suffered great losses. Animal Works is supporting the Save Valley Conservancy through providing pro-bono communications advice to conservancy management, donating second hand laptops to Humani School, and supporting Karen Paolillo’s anti-poaching by supporting her volunteer program at the Turgwe Hippo Trust.
Snow leopard conservation in Nepal
In Nepal there are less than 500 snow leopards left (a tenth of the global population) and the local people living with this reclusive species are living in extreme poverty. To them, snow leopards represent a threat to their basic livelihoods, and so it leads to poaching of the big cat. Animal Works is providing a platform for Tshering O’Gorman raise funds for this project, which focuses on empowering local people to reduce conflict with snow leopards. Funds support local entrepreneurs to prevent conflicts with leopards through wildlife friendly businesses, as well as providing education on the ground. With so few snow leopards left, this is a desperate situation.
