International wildlife charity Born Free Foundation has a track record of putting in place highly effective field projects in response to threats faced by wildlife.

In order to ensure the best possible long term support for elephants, Born Free is working with the wildlife authority in Ethiopia to ensure that funds raised through the Bloody Ivory website can be put to use in the most efficient way.

Babile Elephant Sanctuary in Ethiopia is home to Africa’s most north-easterly ranging population of elephants. Standing between well-equipped poachers and its roughly 200-300 remaining elephants is a small team of rangers. Their number is vastly inadequate to patrol the park’s 6,900km mountainous terrain. Over the last few years at least 100 elephants have been poached. In addition, large numbers of people have settled within the park, growing crops and rearing livestock, competing with the wildlife for Babile’s precious resources and running into conflict with the elephants.

This year the rangers have received some critical training to international standard and are now operational, patrolling and following elephants daily inside the sanctuary. As a result the elephants are being monitored and elephant poachers are being arrested. In the near future Born Free will engage local government and communities in the management of the sanctuary and develop solution to address human-elephant conflict. In the meantime the rangers’ work forms the backbone of efforts to safe-guard Babile’s wildlife populations. All this, however, requires long-term funding, as conservation only has an impact in the mid to long-term. This is a 100% fund. As the administrator of this fund, Born Free will make NO deductions of any kind - every dollar, pound, euro, lira, rupee and dinar you give will go towards protecting elephants on the ground. YOU will be joining the fight to protect elephants from poaching.