It was at South Beach, Fort Kochi, INDIA, a little over a year ago, that a herd of elephants first descended from the mountains of Nilgiri to bring a message of hope to their real-life elephant counterparts around the world. For this was the inaugural event of a exhibition brought forth by CoExistence, a Mark Shand Elephant Family charity organized to create awareness of the plight of wild elephants where human-elephant conflict is concerned.

This elephant herd, waiting patiently to be displayed in the UK and America, are quite life-like. And they should be as each lantana elephant sculpture is the very essence of an Indian elephant from Nilgiris on the brink of extinction. For the artisans who constructed them took care to include features of the elephants that live among them, that, one could say, they have almost gotten to know…

 

“CoExist – Elephant by the Sea”

Female voice 1: “As each honor (lantana elephant made to honor a real life wild elephant) came along onto this beach there was some kind of energy. There was a celebration.”

Elephants By the Sea

Lalju, Security Guard: “I was surprised when I came for duty…”

Suraji, Gen. Convenor Women’s Wing, Cochin Carnival: “This is very unique…”

Josy PJ, Treasurer, Cochin Carnival: “Feels like a real elephant is standing here.”

Nitin Pandit, Director, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE): “Lovely weather and the sea in the background is just fantastic to see almost 120 or so elephants standing here.”

Lalju, security guard: “Seemed to me the elephants came down from the Guruyayeer sanctuary. I wondered if they came to see the beach.”

 

Tourists enjoying the exhibit of the lantana elephants (made from dried Lantana camara stalks) at the beach

South Beach

Fort Cochi, Kerala

Foghorn blasts from barge at sea as elephant sculpture on shore comes to the foreground of the picture

Anjali Kurian RJ, Radio Mango: “And as this lady sat under an honor or you passed by under an honor you are invincible.”

 

THE REAL ELEPHANT ELEPHANT COLLECTIVE

Woman: “These magnificent elephants have actually been created by the real elephant collective with 70 tribal artisans who craft the toxic, invasive lantana weeds into these beautiful forms.”

Man: “Lantana is a weed, it destroys forests.”

Nitin Pandit, Director, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE): “It is literally taking over forests in India and many other places in the world. ATREE has been involved with the Shola Trust and the… therefore through the Elephant Family also, uh, in the development of these magnificent, uh, animal or other elephant structures.”

Sejal Wohra, Programme Director, WWF India: “The conflict issue is coming together, uh, the indigenous livelihood issue is coming together, the issue of co-existence is coming together. It actually brings together all of the elements of conservation of elephants.”

Nitin Pandit, Director, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE): “This is a very novel effort to try to create something which is actually high art. It can employ people, it can remove the lantana and at the same time create something of beauty.”

 

 

Tourists on the beach enjoying the beautiful lantana elephants

 

Female voice: “Being Indian, especially growing up in Kerala, honors are so quintessentially part of our lives.”

Male voice: “I have seen them in the forest many times.”

Suraji, Gen. Convenor Women’s Wing, Cochin Carnival: “I saw a large herd, a tusker, the female and little ones.”

Hamsa, Citu, Labour Union Leader : “There are 3 elephants in the temple right next to my home.”

Josy PJ, Treasurer, Cochin Carnival: “People have spread the word on social media so much that thousands of people come here every day.”

Lifeguard, South Beach Fort Kochi: “Since everyone is busy with the elephants my work has become easier.”

Male Voice: “Last week a few girls from Israel took many photos with a banner of theirs. They came and showed us the photographs later.”

Lalju, Security Guard: “The little elephant in the front, called Messi… I like him a lot.”

Female voice 1: “I love them because of the detail of the feet of the honors, the way they are bent.” “Everything beautiful and everything possible has got to do with an honor.”

 

Matriarchs CoExist for a Whole Earth

Male Voice: “Oh yeah. An experience that created a lot of happiness in my heart.”

 

Each elephant is based on a real wild elephant. The elephants will be auctioned to create for the Asian Elephant Fund

Thanks to Nilekani, philanthropies

The Shola Trust, WWF, ANCF, ATREE

Elephant Family, Protecting Asian elephants and their habitat

The Real Elephant Collective

 

 

 

 

 

“Camilla pays tribute to late brother Mark with elephant sculptures”

Duchess of Cornwall, Camilla: “I think they are so beautiful. Uh, what my brother, who founded the charity, I think if he saw all of these elephants now scattering, uh, across the southwest of England he would be so proud. I do not think he… when he… uh, sadly, he died, having raised a lot of money for the charity and my husband and I took it on… I do not think he he… I do not think he would have believed how how well it could have…it it has gone from strength to strength.

Well, they were locked up in in, I think, in Ruth’s barn. She had a very overcrowded barn in the Cotswolds and I was having a conversation with her not long ago. We were trying to work out what we could do with them and suddenly thought wouldn’t it be a good idea… the whole point of of raising money for this charity is to make elephant corridors, uh, if we could have a Cotswold Corridor so… stretched along along the Cotswolds and I wrote to quite a lot of people and, thank goodness, they took it on. And people are thrill… people have got them already… have fallen completely in love with them and we are rather hoping that they will want to keep them forever. But, um, the idea is they still go to (unintelligible) in May.

I think every charity is suffering at the moment so everybody is doing everything they can to, you know, to to raise funds. And hopefully, these beautiful creatures will do it for the Elephant Family and wherever my brother is I am sure he is, um, praying that they will… they will make a lot of money for the charity. And look here at them. How can you resist them? They are very life-like aren’t they?”

Prince Charles joins his wife Camilla during photo shoot for Elephant Family charity at Highgrove, the Royal country estate

Camilla: “Look at this sort of fellow

Reporter:  “So a special attempt to keep them, hopefully.”  (laughter)

Prince Charles: “I was trying to arrange them so it looks as though he was going to do something awful to this tree.”

(laughter)

Reporter: “It has taken a while to unload.  We did not realize how quite big they were.”

Prince Charles: “They are enormous, aren’t they?”

Camilla: “The mother is not here, you know.”

Reporter: “That is the mother, is it not?”

Camilla: “No, this is the tusker (pointing to the life-sized sculpted lantana reed elephant)”

Reporter: “This is the tusker.”

Camilla: “The teenager (elephant) is still asleep, I think.”

Male reporter: “Mine will be.”

Prince Charles: “I was really hoping that that one following its mother would be coming out along the path… its mother going that way just slightly more angled…

Photographers instruct the Royal couple on how they would like them to pose for their photographs

Prince Charles: (after posing, his face peering through the curled up trunk of an elephant sculpture) “Everything has to be nailed” (referring to the process of crafting the lantana elephants)

Reporter: “It is incredible, absolutely… so beautiful.”

From Daily Mail video “Camilla pays tribute to late brother Mark with elephant sculptures”

 

Images: by Kerala News, lantana elephant construction Elephant Family CoExistence benefit Asian elephants & lantana baby elephant

 

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Mark Shand’sCoExistence campaign