Isn't this baby elephant having a drink simply lovely?

And how do you like how the other ellies all line up in the shade? Even elephants need time out from the sun.

Once she had had her fill, she ambled over to join the others in the shade. It was hot that day!

Where were we?

Last April, we went to visit the Lilayi farm and lodge not far from Lusaka in Zambia. The farm has also hosted this orphaned elephant sanctuary for many years (it was officially opened by the Vice President of the country in 2012). We had a chance to have an inspiring chat with the founder and one of the key staff members. during our short visit.

They are highly dedicated to saving these animals, whose mothers are often killed by poachers, leaving the young ellies which are completely dependent on adults at that age to fend for themselves...and die.

Lilayi also runs educational programmes

As you can see from this wall of photos and images from the back of the hide, Lilayi runs an ongoing educational programme for local schools and visitors. They are doing a superb job to educate Zambian youth about their natural heritage.

Please visit their site to learn more.

Why are elephants poached in the first place?

The mothers are killed for their ivory, which supposedly has medicinal value for customers in the Far East, particularly Viet Nam these days. It has as much medicinal value as my hair, because it's made from keratin, just like my hair. More insidious, perhaps, is that ivory is also sold as a status symbol, so some rich guy can demonstrate he's rich and important by pulling out a piece of elephant tusk or rhino horn to show off. Or he thinks it's an aphrodisiac. If my hair was an aphrodisiac, you can be sure I'd sell it on the aphro market.

Our African wildlife heritage is in serious peril on most parts of the continent, with a number of sub-species having been hunted or poached to extinction in the last decade.

What are some of the challenges the sanctuary faces?

The first obvious challenge is funding. Another big challenge is keeping these vulnerable animals alive. It turns out that their digestive systems are highly sensitive to their feed, and they cannot stomach cow's milk. Their carers have to prepare a complex concoction which gives them the nourishment they need without killing them.

Naturally we thought we could get a funding campaign going on Steemit, but as we heard when we had visited the carcass of a poached rhino with a ranger from the Kruger Park in South Africa, we found that the orphanage's experience of social media was much the same as that ranger's...which is to say they've experienced a huge backlash on social media.

Challenges getting sustainable funding through social media

In the case of the Kruger Park rangers, we suspect it was the poaching ring themselves which organised a terrible negative response online. For Lilayi, it was a sad case of unrealistic expectations on the part of those who got attached to the young pachyderms as they watched them online. However, they really are vulnerable when they're young - they've been traumatised, sometimes having watched (up close) their families get slaughtered and they are trying to reintegrate socially with animals they didn't grow up with. Their digestive systems are also surprisingly fragile. The net result is that they don't all survive. And the sad outcome of putting that story onto social media was that the overseas observers blamed the sanctuary for any young ellie's death.

Wildlife conservation isn't about "cute & adorable", despite what the panderers of clickbait would have us believe. It's about around the clock, tireless efforts to keep the balance of nature in the wild.

Let's get back to cute

But now that I've had my rant, let's get back to cute and adorable.

Look how the one ellie has its trunk resting on its mate's back. And look at the ellie on the left - isn't that trunk curl, well, cute and adorable?

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