Don't miss: Elephant Hospital on Channel 5 on Tuesday 14 June 2022

Posted on 12:45pm Sunday 5th Jun 2022

March 2024: Looking at Paul O'Grady's Great Elephant Adventure?
Take a look here for the elephant sanctuaries featured on the programmme.

Date for your diary: 12 August
It's World Elephant Day.
Find out more here

It's back! Don't miss this on Channel 5 on Tuesday 14 June 2022.

The programme is called Elephant Hospital and it's the world's largest elephant hospital nestled in the forests of Thailand in Lampang. It's open 24/7 and is a sort of NHS for elephants. The team of highly skilled and very dedicated staff never know what sort of problems the elephants will be arriving with but they all do their very best to help them.

Paul O'Donoghue and Katheirne Connor head back to the hospital for this new series (four parts). It cares for over 100 sick, injured or neglected animals every year. And if the elephants can't come to the hospital, the vets go to the elephants!

This is a heart-warming series with uplifting and unexpected stories, be they treating an elephant with cancer or a baby elephant being fed with a giant milk bottle! There's an elephant with severe diarrhoea, and a male elephant who has been attacked by another bull elephant. It's all go, as the incredible team try to help each elephant as best they can.

Find out more from Channel 5

I am looking for ways to donate to this hospital - watch this space

It's supported by Friends of the Asian Elephant and here is their Facebook page.

Their website is here.

#ElephantHospital

THANK YOU to everyone at the hospital for all you do for these wonderful elephants.

The World Elephant Day website has LOTS of information about ways to help elephants, whatever day of the year it is so please take a look at it here.

See our list of elephant conservation charities here

How about an elephant conservation holiday?
Take a look at the range of choices
with Responsible Travel

You could adopt an orphan elephant
from the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust
Image ©David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

Free the Bears' Night in a Cage Fundraiser - 14 May 2022

Posted on 10:00am Friday 6th May 2022

There are some really inspiring people around in the animal world.

Free the Bears rescue sun and moon bears from the most dreadful conditions and look after them in their sanctuaries in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. You may have seen the charity on the programme Bears About the House on BBC2 with Giles Clark back in 2020.

In 2020, the coronavirus put an abrupt halt to any of the normal fundraising activities the charity undertakes to raise funds to care for the bears. So they asked bear lovers around the world to help raise funds by spending a night in a cage!

51 bear lovers took part - and the amazing thing is that they raised enough funds to pay for the care of 240 rescued bears for two months by spending a night in a cage!

Visit their You Tube Channel here

Night in a Cage 2022

So on 14 May 2022 (or any night in May), they are asking us to raise funds and awareness for the bears by spending a #Nightinacage.

Find out more and get involved here.

Don’t miss: Cher and the Loneliest Elephant on Sunday 16th May 2021 at 8pm.

Posted on 4:00pm Sunday 16th May 2021

This Sunday evening on Channel 5, settle yourself down and take a look at Cher and the Loneliest Elephant at 8pm.

Cher’s charity Free the Wild helped to rescue an Asian Elephant from the Islamabad’s Marghazar Zoo, and relocate the elephant too.

Kaavan was in a terrible state in the zoo

Cher travelled to Pakistan to help save Kaavan. The poor elephant had spent years chained up in Islamabad’s zoo, and he has been alone since 2012 when his partner died.

Kaavan became obese because of a poor diet and he has behavioural issues. Visitors to the zoo noticed Kaavan’s physical and psychological deterioration and they began to raise concerns over his wellbeing.

The public started to raise awareness

The zoo management took no action, and so the people of Pakistan and Anika Sleem and her colleagues at Team Kaavan began to campaign online, so as to raise awareness of the situation Kaavan was in.

Cher got involved …

These campaigns reached Cher and she sought to help him which led her to Mark Cowne and his wife Gina Nelthorpe-Cowne, both life-long conservationists.

The three of them formed Free the Wild to help Kaavan and other wild animals in captivity who are suffering. In 2016, the battle to relocate him began and in 2020, he was finally relocated to an animal sanctuary in Cambodia.

Kaavan was free to go to Cambodia

Dr Frank Goeritz, one of the world’s leading elephant veterinary experts, travelled with Kaavan who handled the 23 hour, 4,000km journey to Cambodia well. He went by road and air to the one million acre Kulen-Promtep Wildlife Sanctuary. Volunteers and staff work to protect the natural habitat for a range of species. And Kaavan the elephant is lonely no more.

The zoo has now closed due to the way its animals were treated and its grounds are due to be a conservation area.

Islamabad’s zoo is now closed… Final evacuations

In December 2020, FOUR PAWS evacuated the last two animals, Himalayan brown bears Suzie and Bubloo. They went by plane from Parkistan to Jordan where they will have a home at the “Al Ma'wa for Nature and Wildlife” sanctuary – run by the Princess Alia Foundation and FOUR PAWS. There are no more animals left in the zoo in Islamabad, which is finally. Find out more about Suzie and Bubloo closing its gates for good.

Find out more about the story of Kaavan and the other animals that Free the Wild are working to help here.

Visit Free the Wild

Visit Four Paws

Our Blog - Ways to help animals