Thirty-four baby elephants have been ripped from their families in a Zimbabwe national park and are being held in captivity before being shipped to Chinese zoos.
Please sign our petition to the Zimbabwe Minister of Tourism urging him to stop this terrible animal abuse and release the babies into the wild and back to their families.
The animals were captured in Hwange National Park, one of Zimbabwe’s most popular tourist destinations along with seven wild caught lions and ten wild caught sable antelope. Horrified tourists saw elephant herds being stampeded by helicopter and gunfire. The babies that could not keep up were captured.
The baby elephants are between two-and-a-half and five years old and still suckling from their mothers. At this very minute they are terrified and traumatised, kept in confinement amid strange and frightening experiences. These are very young babies, nothing can replace the nourishment they get from their mothers’ milk and so some of them at least are likely to get sick and die. Some of them are likely to die on the long journey from Africa to China and a horrifying fate awaits them when they get there. They will be locked in cages and will spend the rest of their lives in captivity.
*Please note this image is not of a trapped elephant, it is used to illustrate the age and needs of the trapped calves.
