Organizations around the world are supporting the cause of elephant preservation. For as long as ivory has been desired elephants have been poached due to the ivory found in their tusks. Theweek.com estimates that one pound of ivory can sell for $1,500 on the black market. Over 70 organizations are working to end the large scale slaughter of the world’s largest land mammal. Each organization has dedicated endless time, effort and money to do their part in reducing the poaching of elephants worldwide.

Founded in 1895, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) is one of the first establishments that has been working to conserve more than two million square miles of wild places around the world. Although WCS has branched out to all endangered wildlife, they have a specific program dedicated to elephants. WCS states that their goal is to create “A world where people and ecologically functioning populations of wild elephants can co-exist and thrive across the elephants’ range.” In 2013 WCS launched their 96 Elephants campaign; a campaign to get supporters to pledge not to buy or sell ivory and to support a ban on commercial sales of ivory. Since the launch of this campaign, WCS states that, “hundreds of thousands of supporters” have taken the pledge. In further progress, a federal ivory ban went into effect in 2016 due to the huge demand from supporters to prohibit to buying and selling of ivory.

In partnership with WCS, Save the Elephants (STE) is a foundation created in 1993 with the sole purpose of researching and monitoring African elephants “to provide fresh insight into the life of elephants.” Through their Elephant Crisis Fund STE states they “support more than 37 partners in the implementation of over 50 different projects aimed at stopping the killing, stopping the trafficking and ending the demand for ivory.”  Beside the Elephant Crisis Fund, STE hold programs such as ‘Internships for Elephant Scholars,’ ‘Turning Poachers into Gamekeepers’ and many more.

The care and outreach to help elephants stretches all the way to Battlefield. The BHS Humane Society is a club that works to care for animals. Junior Brooke Bowen, Vice President of the Humane Society, feels that, “the most important aspect [to caring for any animal] is making sure it feels loved.”

Progress is being made to stop the poaching of elephants and the selling of ivory. China has announced that they are stopping the selling and trade of ivory by the end of 2017. This is major progress and more countries are making attempts to do the same.