Today's #PoWNatureChallenge is to create the image of an elephant, whether it's gathering branches to arrange them into the shape of an elephant or doing a bark rubbing as an artwork. (I did that as a kid, it's good fun! I did brass rubbing art too.) Equally, one can just draw an elephant, as I have, to raise awareness of the plight of the elephant as an endangered species. 🐘❤ My drawing above is of an Indian elephant, based on a photo 📷 I found by Petr Kratochvil who released his photo into the Public Domain for everyone to use.
Previously, I've supported Ellen DeGeneres' Twitter campaign #bekindtoelephants, back in 2017, to raise money for saving the African elephant from exploitation. Today's challenge focuses on protecting the Asian elephant.
There are 2 main species of the elephant: the African and The Asian elephants. There are a few obvious differences between them, for instance, the Asian elephant is smaller than the African species and they have differently sized and shaped ears. The Indian elephant is one of the 3 subspecies of the Asian elephant. Young, female Asian elephants don't have tusks, such as the one I have drawn here. Indian elephants live up to over half a century, or more, depending on how successful conservation has been. They can be found in either tropical forests or grasslands. Female elephants live in all female, matriarchal herds, comprising of the eldest female at the head of the family, leading her female offspring and their descendents too. Male elephants live separately in their own herds and any male offspring in the matriarchal herds leave to join a male herd when older, so elephants don't interbreed by living in the same groups. Select males join a matriarchal herd for a few weeks for breeding.
South India has the most Asian elephants, especially in Bannerghatta National Park, which has a special elephant reserve and project. Although India has conferred a huge amount of wildlife protection status on the elephant by including it in their 1972 Act, elephants are still in need of vital conservation efforts. Much needed habitat is being lost, bringing them into contact with humans, often resulting in dangerous clashes for the elephants. The major tensions between humans and elephants is poaching and farming. International efforts against the ivory trade have been quite successful in reducing elephant tragedies. However, the problem still remains that villagers become angry when elephants, in a matter of hours, destroy crops, farm animals and villages which are built on the elephants' habitat land. But elephants often have nowhere else to live and find food, which makes it a tricky situation to resolve. However, there are education efforts to help villagers and farmers understand the plight of the endangered elephant.
Nevertheless, the elephant has an important environmental role to play. It can locate water underground and dig for it. This not only means elephants have water to drink but also means other animals can share this water supply! Elephants can also clear areas of forest so plants at ground level receive sunlight to grow. They are intelligent, social animals with strong emotions and long memories.
The British-Asian charity Elephant Family has collaborated with Clarence House for today's task. They focus on finding ways to improve the cohabitation of humans and elephants so these majestic animals don't become extinct. Projects include preventing roadways from destroying forests and creating wildlife corridors so elephants can move freely between forests they inhabit, which is important because they are non-territorial, migrating animals. For more on their work and the support they need, you can visit their website at:
Humans and elephants haven't always clashed. Indeed, the elephant is an important cultural and religious symbol for many people in India and elsewhere.
The Hindu elephant-headed god of wisdom, the intellect, art, science and success, called Ganesh (also known as Ganesha or Ganapati), is one of the main and most popular gods and is the god for various people, including intellectuals and writers. There are many different mythologies about him, some say he symbolises the intellect because one of the women he married was the goddess of intellect (called Siddhi). Hindus celebrate the birth of this part elephant part human-looking god with a large, 10 day long national festival every year called Ganesh Chaturthi. The god Ganesh is seen as representing new beginnings, overcoming adversity and thriving, inspiring others to do likewise. However, Ganesh can also hold back those who become over-ambitious so there's a balance to success. This god features heavily in art and is also depicted on temple walls. Ganash is said to be the writer of the Mahabharata, an ancient Indian Sanskrit text, written in poetic style, on the history of an actual war which took place as well as moral law.
There is also a strikingly similar elephant goddess unrelated to Ganesh, yet depicted with the same elephant head and single tusk. She is called Vainayaki, and appears as a less well-known Hindu goddess. However, she possibly comes from a female-centred, main Hindu sect called Shaktism, which considers 'woman' as the highest metaphysical level of reality, symbolised by the goddess and supreme being, Shakti. The male aspect of the divine (Shiva) is of lesser importance than the female aspect of the divine (Shakti).
Wikipedia has a great quote from the Shaktisangama Tantra, cited from Bose's (2000) book:
"Woman is the creator of the universe, the universe is her form; woman is the foundation of the world, she is the true form of the body.
In woman is the form of all things, of all that lives and moves in the world. There is no jewel rarer than woman, no condition superior to that of a woman.[9]"
[9] Bose, Mandakranta (2000). Faces of the Feminine in Ancient, Medieval, and Modern India. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. p. 115. ISBN 0195352777. OCLC 560196442., cited in:
Vainayaki is also referred to in the Buddhist text Aryamanjusrimulakalpa. Mahayana Buddhism includes a god called Vinayaka who is a dancing elephant god, possibly adopted from the Hindu god Ganesh.
So we need conservation efforts to succeed, even in densely populated areas, before the elephant becomes yet another beautiful yet extinct creature, forever lost to the natural world.
One way you can help is by adopting an elephant to help protect this awesome animal:
Comments
Post a Comment