About Us
International Elephant Foundation supports conservation, awareness, scientific programs, and community-based strategies to create a sustainable future for elephants. Our projects focus on both the endangered Asian elephant and the threatened African elephant for reducing human-elephant conflict, protecting habitat, eliminating poaching, and advancing knowledge to find cures for elephant diseases. We work anywhere there are elephants. We believe that the stronger the bonds people have with elephants, the more invested people will become in the survival of elephants as individuals and species. We are the catalyst for creating a sustainable future where elephants thrive by linking people and elephants for their mutual long-term benefit.
What We Do
In the elephant range countries of Asia (and Africa) we support programs that protect elephants, habitat, and the communities that live with elephants in their “backyards”. The wild Asian elephant is only found in 13 countries of South and Southeast Asia. About 20 percent of the world's human population lives in the present range of this extremely endangered species resulting in the loss of habitat and increasing human-elephant conflict. IEF supports habitat revitalization efforts, anti-poaching patrols, and surveillance endeavors. Our projects also include strong community outreach components focusing on education, capacity building, and stakeholder engagement to create sustainability. Scientific investigations in North America and Europe expand our knowledge of their physiology and behavior to the benefit of all elephants.
IEF’s longest running elephant conservation project supports the Sumatran elephant Conservation Response Units (CRUs), protecting the evolutionarily significant and critically endangered Sumatran elephant as well as creating strong conservation partners in a region where elephants are often considered problems. These CRUs operate throughout the Indonesian island of Sumatra and provide umbrella protection for a number of endangered species who share the same habitat, including the Sumatran tiger, Sumatran rhino, orangutan, tapir, sun bear, hornbill, and more.
Where We Work
In Asia, we currently support projects in Indonesia (Sumatra), India, Vietnam, Nepal, and China. In Africa, we currently support projects in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Botswana, and Namibia.
For investigations into the Elephant Endotheliotropic Herpesvirus, we support research efforts in the United States