World Elephant Day 2020
The first World Elephant Day was observed on August 12, 2012. Since then, the day is observed annually seeking to care and protect elephants. This day was conceived by the Elephant Reintroduction Foundation in Thailand and Canadian Canadian filmmakers Patricia Sims and Michael Clark in 2011.
The day was officially launched on August 12, 2012. Till a century ago, there were around 12 million elephants in the wild across the globe. But today, there may be only around 4 lakh jumbos in existence. Habitat loss, poaching threats, mistreatment in captivity are some of the reasons posing threat to the existence of the elephants. The need of the hour for the governments is to step up enforcement to prevent poaching, trade in ivory and protecting the habitats of the jumbos. The Asian elephant is marked as ‘endangered’ by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) list of threatened species. Last census of elephants highlighted that 6000 wild elephants live in Sri Lanka.
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