Support Endangered Elephants While Drinking Cocktails At The Castello Plan Tonight
Tonight, The Castello Plan is holding a fundraiser in honor of World Elephant Day, and a percentage of the proceeds from the beer and cocktails specials, as well as the goodies, will be donated to the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee – the country’s largest natural habitat refuge developed for the endangered mammals who had been in circuses or zoos.
Additionally, if The Castello Plan (1213 Cortelyou Road) raises enough money, it will be able to adopt an elephant.
The fundraiser begins at 4pm and will run throughout the night.
A haven for old, sick, and needy elephants, the sanctuary – a nonprofit licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture – sits on more than 2,700 acres and provides three separate and protected natural habitat environments for Asian and African elephants. Right now, there are 14 elephants at the sanctuary – and you can see them here. While the public isn’t allowed at the sanctuary, you can get a glimpse of these gentle giants on the “elephant cam.”
“Our residents are not required to perform or entertain for the public; instead, they are encouraged to live like elephants,” the sanctuary’s website states.
More from the website:
In the wild, elephants are migratory, walking 30 to 50 miles each day, and form intricate family structures. They grieve for their dead in a more-than-instinctive way. They show humor and express compassion for one another with intense interactions. The reality of their lives in captivity is that many are in chains up to 18 hours a day. They are enclosed in steel pens—often alone—broken and controlled by fear and intimidation. Our mission is to give them the freedom they deserve.
Elephants worldwide, from those in circuses in the U.S. to those being killed for their ivory, face incredible amounts of danger. Recently, Julie Larsen Maher, a photographer for the Wildlife Conservation Society (who takes photos at places like the Prospect Park Zoo and the Bronx Zoo), recently traveled to Africa to photograph African elephants – “a vulnerable species currently losing ground as 35,000 elephants are killed a year,” Maher says in National Geographic.
From the same piece:
Entire families of elephants are being slaughtered for their ivory. The global appetite to own trinkets carved from elephant tusks has dealt a crushing blow to these plant-eating pachyderms that roam the forests and savannahs of Africa.
To stop the killing of elephants, and the trafficking of (and demand for) ivory, the Wildlife Conservation Society has launched a campaign called 96 Elephants, named for the number of elephants currently gunned down every day by poachers.
I believe that people want to save what they can see. In my role as WCS staff photographer, it is my goal – and my passion – to take photos of elephants on their home land; photos that show their lives together as families; photos that inspire people to save 96 elephants every day.
Flyer courtesy The Castello Plan, photos via The Elephant Sanctuary.