05
June
2015
|
15:00
Asia/Singapore

Wild about elephants

Sheryl bathing the elephants

After spending the last academic year fundraising and raising awareness for the highly endangered Asian elephant, six Tembusu College students at NUS went the extra mile to learn more about the animal. The group spent 10 days in May at the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai, Thailand, a sign of their commitment to the conservation of the College's "animal of the year.  The elephant was picked from the endangered animals that the College's five houses are named after; the other four being the red panda, crane, Komodo dragon, and snow leopard.

The undergraduates who participated in the Park's Weekly Volunteer Program are part of the Tembusu Wildlife Association (tWild), a community involvement project with the aim of educating students about and drawing them into animal conservation efforts.

The gutsy tWild members endured backbreaking labour and scorching heat ' clearing elephant dung, rolling banana rice balls and harvesting corn ' to understand what it takes to conserve these magnificent animals. The mammals are in danger of dying out due to habitat loss and illegal activities such as poaching.

"Though the work was hard, reminding ourselves why we were doing it and how we were actually helping the elephants helped us persevere, said Year 2 students Sridharan Sheeraja and Sheryl Lee, who respectively are tWild's President and External Outreach Director. The payoff for them was getting up close to the animals, bathing them and going on "ele-walks, where guides introduced them to elephant families onsite. Sheeraja majors in Life Sciences and Sheryl in Geography.

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Scooping elephant poo

The College raised more than $1,000 for the elephant sanctuary, which, together with other donations, will be used to rescue 20 more elephants and expand the Park.

"It was really gratifying to hear, because it felt like the little sum of money that was donated and the work that we did actually made a concrete difference in the lives of these elephants, said Sheeraja.

The group came away with an intimate understanding of what was needed to care for elephants. At times, they questioned the effectiveness of their labour. But, "to see the indomitable spirit of the team refusing to give up because that would mean more work for the others was incredibly heartening, Sheryl said.

"This would definitely not be an experience that any of us would forget. All six of us were grateful to be the first ever tWild overseas team to be given a chance to visit and do our part for one of our house mascots, ended a tWild blog entry titled, "Saying Goodbye.

Twild would like to continue supporting Asian elephant conservation by joining the Park's Elephant Ambassador Program, a global network of people who act as the eyes and ears for elephants around the world.

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Sitting on top of the cut corn, for a bumpy one-and-a-half-hour ride