1st May 2021

Deep in the Nilgiri Hills of Southern India lies the Gudalur forest division. A lush picturesque green valley nestles in the border between three neighboring States. It is here that we find single largest concentration of Asian elephants in India. They live in habitats that are still connected across crucial elephant corridors of the Nilgiris and Eastern Ghats.

With increasing pressures on forests from the existence of tea, coffee plantations and other agriculture sectors the Asian elephants of India are fast losing their natural habitats. Due to the fragmentation of land, resulting from damaging consumerist trends and the investment activities of large multinational companies, they cannot roam their grasslands, scrublands and forest, causing human and elephant conflicts when elephants go in search for food, water and shade. The same habitats have been taken away to create human settlements, farming and plantations.

However, tea and coffee plantations have the potential to be elephant friendly. Coffee especially supports forest undergrowth and there's hardly any conflict over those crops as elephants don't eat them. So people who live on the edges of forests are actually adapting and negotiating coexistence!

To highlight coexistence with the Nilgiri elephants, a local NGO The Real Elephant Collective works alongside several groups to raise awareness amongst local farmers, plantation estate workers, and several indigenous people (known as Adivasi) to promote ways in which local communities can mutually benefit and co-exist with the elephants.

Using Art as the conservation medium, The Real Elephant Collective embarked on an ambitious project, partnering with Elephant Family Charity, and created the Co-Existence Herd. This is an environmental art exhibition that started life in the Nilgiris and is travelling across Oceans.

100 Wooden Lantana elephant sculptures will stand proudly In London from May 2021 to mark the buildup to the COP 26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, UK to discuss the world’s climate emergency. To begin with, 30 of the herd enjoyed rural Britain for their first exhibition at Sudely Castle in Gloucestershire as part of Co-Existence an environmental art exhibition.

The life-size Elephant sculptures were created from Lantana Camara, an invasive weed taking over native forests. Several weigh 300kg and stand more than eight feet tall. The Real Elephant Collective engaged local artists and indigenous Adivasi communities to create these amazing Lantana Elephants, or Aane in the Tamil language, giving much needed livelihood to more than 70 families over past three years. Their traditional knowledge and relationship with the Elephants have brought the sculptures to life.

The Real Elephant Collective continue to support income for indigenous families particularly during the pandemic. The Collective is partnering with www.habba.org who are helping to diversify and sell online products made from Lantana Camara weed such as furniture. In this way indigenous forest communities help to project and rejuvenate the native forests and in turn protect habitats for the Asian elephants.

The 100 strong herd of Lantana elephant sculptures will be on display in London and the Royal Parks throughout the summer of 2021. They will then migrate across the Ocean and travel over the next three years from the east to the west coasts of the USA, stopping off at various locations for display, raising awareness of their shrinking habitat, and shrinking numbers. The Lantana elephants are a warning to us all that they came first and we Homo Sapiens are another species that must urgently learn to co-exist with them.

Learn more about Real Elephant Collective and their partners.

https://www.therealelephant.com

https://m.facebook.com/therealeleco/