Two elephants in Zimbabwe are in life-threatening situations as you read this. Each has fallen victim to cruel wire snares – torture devices that cut dangerously deep into the flesh, cause severe tissue damage and likely leave the animal in agony.

Credit: KAWFT

The elephants – members of two separate herds roaming the vast Lake Kariba region – were spotted by our partner, the Bumi Hills Anti-Poaching Unit (BHAPU), and the team they are working with, Kariba Animal Welfare Fund Trust (KAWFT). One of the animals is an eight-year-old female with a snare around her ear and tusk, while the other is a calf – estimated to be just a year old – who has a snare wound tightly around its back leg and probably causing great pain.

Credit: BHAPU

Already, the snare has caused significant damage to the elder elephant: there is a terrible wound behind her ear where the snare is embedded, affecting its use and causing the ear to collapse forward. 

Credit: BHAPU

If these elephants are not rescued and treated SOON, they could suffer life-altering injuries, be captured by predators, or die as a result of infection. We need your help right now – and here is why…

It is a race against time to help two snared elephants – one still a calf – and your donation right now could make a life-or-death difference.
Donate now!

Credit: BHAPU

To help these animals, our team must dart and tranquilize them first – but the elephants are extremely difficult to target from the ground. They are wild, elusive, and largely hidden in the vast, densely wooded area they are roaming.

The most effective way to dart them, therefore, will be from above. Our team urgently needs to charter a helicopter and pilot so they can spot the animals from the sky and dart them, but they cannot fund this alone. And this is where we need your help as fast as possible.

Credit: BHAPU

A helicopter approach is the safest way to track and dart the injured, skittish elephants. Trying from the ground means being attacked by an irate mother who does not know we are there to help and will kill to protect her injured calf. To save the calf, a helicopter is the only option we need help to hire one.

Please, donate now for the elephant rescue.

Snares act like nooses, slowly cutting into the flesh and causing more damage every day. With each passing moment, these elephants are at great risk of losing body parts, making them vulnerable to predators, infection and even death.

Credit: BHAPU

Your support right now could be the difference between life and death for these snared animals – integral members of their herds. Elephants live in tightly bonded, female-led herds, and the death of this individual would devastate the herd. Elephants have been proven to grieve their dead, and if it is the matriarch who dies, the herd may dissolve.

Credit: BHAPU

If we can come together to raise $12,000 (roughly £9,469), we can hire a helicopter and a pilot and provide the critical capture kits and supplies needed to undertake the emergency treatment these elephants urgently need.

The greater the delay, the greater the risk to their survival.

We anticipate that the other elephants in the herds will try to protect their kin from human interference, which means our team must execute the rescue with military precision and the highest level of care.

Once an elephant has been successfully darted from the air, our team will rush in, carefully remove the snare and treat the injury. The sedative drug will then be reversed, and the elephant will be monitored until it is steady on its feet and ready to rejoin its herd.

Our teams are preparing to mobilize at a moment’s notice and are monitoring both elephants’ movements, so they do not lose sight of them. All they need now is the funding to charter the helicopter.

It is critical that we raise the funds because these badly injured elephants really need our help. Please, donate right away so that we can get the team in the air to save the lives of these majestic animals.