Our Mission:

"To secure a future for elephants and sustain the beauty and ecological integrity of the places they live, to promote man’s delight in their intelligence and the diversity of their world, and to develop a tolerant relationship between the two species."

Save the Elephants is a non-profit organisation started by one of the world’s foremost authorities on African elephants, Dr Iain Douglas Hamilton.

During the 1970’s Iain investigated the status of elephants throughout Africa and was the first to alert the world to the ivory poaching holocaust. He chronicled how Africa’s elephant population was halved between 1979 and 1989 and helped bring about the ivory trade ban.

Today, Save the Elephants has grown into a long-term monitoring programme on social and spatial behaviour of elephants. The project started in Kenya and has extended to three other regions in Africa, Mali, Gabon, and Southern Africa.

The Save the Elephants Transboundary Research Programme started in 2002 and has been principally sponsored by Marlene McCay and Tanda Tula Safari Camp. Other sponsors have also made significant contributions over the years, for which STE is extremely grateful.

Drs Michelle and Steve Henley head up the research programme, which is based at Tanda Tula in the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve. The researchers monitor elephant movements with GPS tracking devices across the private reserves and the Greater Kruger National Park into Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

In order to foster peaceful elephant/human interactions while human populations are expanding and elephants are being compressed within their range, the requirement for reliable distribution and habitat interaction data is needed. The researchers’ work has been instrumental in providing that very information. In collating the GPS positioning data of the elephant movements combined with field research, they are able to provide valuable interpretive data that helps understand elephant migration patterns and behaviour as well as elephant impact on the environment.

Tanda Tula guests are invited to visit the research centre at the camp, where the researchers or one of their assistants will introduce you to their world and their incredible work.

For more information on Save the Elephants please visit: http://www.savetheelephants.org

For more information on contributions or donations please contact +27(0) 15 793 0369 or e-mail: michelephant@worldonline.co.za

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