Elephant Herd Enters City Of London, Wants To Give Examples To Humans 'We Can Coexist'

Illustration (Unsplash)

JAKARTA - A herd of life-size elephants will be paraded through central London on Saturday, May 15 to voice ideas. Humans and wild animals can share space in this crowded world.

A total of 125 model elephants were brought to London by the conservation group Elephant Family. This herd of elephants previously coexisted with the natives of the Nilgiri Hills, South India.

Organizers hope to highlight the need to coexist with wild animals after lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic slowed human activity and helped some threatened species to recover.

"It's a matter of mutual survival", Ruth Ganesh, principal guardian of the elephant family, told Reuters via Antara.

"Saving them is really about saving ourselves", she said.

After the parade on the Mall, the elephants will be displayed in a London park - guarded by former Gurkhas - and will be sold for £ 30,000 ( IDR 599 million) each to raise funds.

The Elephant Family will use the money raised for conservation activities, such as planting crops for elephants to eat on the edge of farmland to distract them from human-grown food.

They are also working with WildEast, a charity that tries to return British farmland to its wild state to help reverse the decline in bird populations.

Sculptors have made birds stand on elephants. Some will be on display at London's Sladmore Contemporary gallery as part of an exhibition on coexistence in June and July featuring artist George Butler.

Until the lockdown, Butler documented war zones such as Iraq and Syria through illustrations. Lockdown shifts its focus to the conflict between man and nature. The result is a depiction of an elephant next to a London landmark and two giant maps.

One shows the region where humans and nature compete - bears in North America, for example. Others show successful coexistence, as among people and thick-skinned animals in southern India.