There is nothing I love more than to be in the bushveld and to be surrounded by our beautiful wildlife. I grew up right next to the Kruger National Park, so whenever I am in the bush I feel right at home, and the older I get the more sacred the bush becomes. Today I am sharing a very special shoot, I urge you to read the whole post as I feel so many people are uneducated about these gorgeous Gentle Giants I get to photograph so often, this is my opinion and how I have experienced Adventures with Elephants. >

I love visiting Adventures with Elephants (AWE), the people here take in elephants that society has seen as ‘problem' elephants and they habituate them. Many of you might not like this idea of elephants being habituated, but they have nowhere else to go, their choices are limited to being culled, poached or rescued and placed in captivity.

Do you know how much an elephant is worth in Africa? The truth is that no one wants elephants, they destroy habitats (not through any fault of their own) and are very expensive to move to new locations, you will probably have to pay someone to take them off your hands and most of the time the people who will pay top dollar for them are the ones that want to hunt them for sport.

It is an appalling fact that over the last 100 years the African elephant population has been reduced from 3.5 million elephants to only 375 000 remaining today, and habitat destruction has reduced the land available to elephants to only 5% of what they once had (usually the worst lands, as humans have taken the best for cities, agriculture and such) and if the current rate of poaching continues then we will lose all our elephants within a decade’. [Source]

Our elephants are in trouble and there is an urgent need to protect these gentle giants. >

A little more about AWE

The group of 7 elephants at AWE have a purpose that is far better than just being rescued and placed in a national park where they will just over populate it futher, the elephants at AWE help their species and other species by means of educating us humans.

The program they run here is to; 1, look after the 7 elephants 2, help the communities around them by job creation 3, Educate the locals who have to live with the elephants, 4, observe the elephants and learn from them. Their end goal is conservation through education. Adventures with Elephants help our wildlife more than you know:

Some facts about Adventures with Elephants:

• Adventures with Elephants have 7 elephants

• 5 of them were considered troubled elephants and were going to be culled. 2 Elephants were born into the herd.

• The 7 elephants get to roam freely on 300 hectare during the day - they need way more than this, but unfortunately land is limited (still, they are far from being caged like zoo animals - in my opinion).

• At certain times during the day they go and meet visitors > the keepers teach the visitors more about the elephants, their habits and the habitat they occupy.

• At night they sleep in a boma with some of the keepers to keep them safe from poachers.

• These elephants are habituated and humanly trained for a variety of roles from educational demonstrations of their abilities to film and research work as well as daily enrichment and anti poaching efforts for all wildlife in the area.

• AWE’s elephants are one of the most diversely researched herds in South Africa and have been contributing to many different research projects.

I started working with Adventures with elephants about 6 years ago and it has been a treat to go there every now and then. I hope more and more people will go and visit this place to see what it is all about. >