London's biggest ever outdoor exhibition, backed by Prince Charles and his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, has raised a record £4.1 million fund to help save endangered Asian elephants found in South and South East Asia. Painted artificial elephants, first displayed on some of London's busiest streets and parks, were subsequently auctioned off in aid of the Elephant Family charity. Ruth Powys, Director of Elephant Family, tells Shyam Bhatia of asianaffairs in an exclusive how the money was raised and the use to which it will be put.

AA: How has the Elephant Parade exhibition done and how much money have you raised?
RP: The exhibition has blown every single target we dreamed of completely out of the water. We aimed to raise a million, then it went to two million and then in the end we raised over £4 million, actually £4.1 million. That's a huge achievement and we've put the Asian elephant on the map in the public consciousness here in London. It's very satisfying. It's well beyond our expectation. Other exhibitions like this have happened in other countries and the average amount you would raise per elephant was £7,000. Here in London the average amount we've raised per elephant is £15,000. We were hoping we would make £8,000, so you can imagine our absolute delight when it went so much higher. Altogether we had some 262 elephants on display, making it London's biggest outdoor exhibition on record.

AA: What will you do with the money you have raised?
RP: We help to connect areas of habitat that become fragmented with elephant corridors and a huge amount of the funds raised will be invested in that. But we'll also be working in areas like Sumatra where it's not about corridors, it's actually about saving big chunks of habitat. Also Malaysia and Thailand. We haven't been doing much in Thailand, but we'll be able to step up our activities in Thailand where they have the same problems as India with the fragmentation. So we'll be looking at the possibility of investing in elephant corridors there.
In India we are working with the Wildlife Trust of India and the Wildlife Protection Society of India. They both have nationwide presence and work all over India. They work with many different animals, but they have a big interest in elephants. The Wildlife Protection Society of India has worked a lot with tigers. Dr Vivek Menon, who is with the Wildlife Trust of India, has had a focus on elephants for an awful long time. They look after India's wildlife in general, but they have prioritised the elephant because they know by saving the elephant they will be able to save so many other animals.

AA: You say you will not be satisfied until you have a parade of elephants on Downing Street, leading up to the residence of the Prime Minister?
RP: When we talk about elephants going up Downing Street, we're not talking about live elephants. Can you imagine the reactions of the animal rights people? We'd be firebombed. I mean the painted elephants. We'd like to have a parade of elephants, painted, located on Downing Street to help deliver this petition of 100,000 signatures that we're aiming for.

This is an objective we haven't yet achieved. When the elephants were on the other streets, it was wonderful to be able to educate the public and it was incredible to raise so much money for the solution. But the third objective we have yet to meet, and which we are focusing our effort on, is generating signatures on our petition so we can start influencing the way the UK government invests in biodiversity and aiming to put the Asian elephant higher up on their agenda. We can only do that when we have 100,000 signatures on our petition. At the moment we have about 12,000, so there is a bit of a way to go.

AA: How did you manage to attract so much support from celebrities and others for Elephant Parade?
RP: Are you hinting at people like Liz Hurley and Joanna Lumley? In some cases it was simply that people read about it and said, 'Let me help.' For a lot of these high profile people there are so many causes to support. We put together a committee behind Elephant Parade of people who were passionate about the cause but also had the influence and connections to get on board. I would credit our very strong committee who really helped alert the right people and get them. Take Mark Shand. The fact that he partied a lot when he was much younger has definitely done something good for Asian elephants because he now has a really wonderful black book of contacts and he's put it to good use by getting people like Stephen Fry and Joanna Lumley to help us.

AA: One of those public figures associated with helping Elephant Parade is Prince Charles' wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, who is also the sister of Mark Shand. Has she been very supportive?
RP: I think she's very proud of Mark for pulling off what he did. You always want to show your family anything that you've achieved and share it with them and she was very supportive just by coming and looking at the elephants. I think she's keen to have an elephant at Clarence House (Prince Charles' residence in London) and you can't get more supportive than that.

AA: Mark Shand is known in India because of his books, in particular the story of his travels with an elephant called Tara. Has he been one of the driving forces behind this project?
RP: Without a doubt. Mark has been in the office working all the hours you can imagine. We have a small team and no one has had a life for the last 18 months, it's been all-consuming and Mark has been leading from the front. He's been obsessed with it, yes, I would call it an obsession. But he's been obsessed with elephants ever since Tara.

AA: Does that mean the Elephant Parade project was conceived as far back as 2008/2009?
RP: We were doing our own exhibitions of topiary elephants as early as 2006, we at Elephant Family were making them ourselves from hedges and natural materials, life size models. Then we met the founders of Elephant Parade and decided to join forces. Actually, we met them in 2008 and it was being talked about in 2008 and in the beginning of 2009 we really, really got going. It's been 18 months of solid work.

AA: Has it been two separate groups of people working together, one from Elephant Parade and one from Elephant Family?
RP: That's right, yes. Elephant Parade is a company and they have the contracts for the elephants and the model. Elephant Family is the charity, we were basically the events organiser but we also benefit from every single elephant parade that goes on anywhere in the world. As Elephant Family we are the official charity for Elephant Parade and we invest the funds that they raise.

The team that made Elephant Parade London happen was the team Elephant Family and that's 11 of us. These are the people who put the elephants on the streets, got the sponsorships, found the artists, put on all the events. That was the team and then you had the committee of about 20 influential people who were able to recruit some of the top artists and get some of the well known people behind us and make sure we have people like Lakshmi Mittal at the event bidding for an elephant for a lot of money.

AA: Have you visited India yourself in connection with your work?
RP: Yes, I've been to India a few times and we managed to get out there over Christmas and the New Year to connect with what we were trying to do. We were in the North East, in Madhya Pradesh, and then in Kerala to look at one of the corridors that we're now going to face creating.

AA: Can you tell us about the Elephant Corridors project?
RP: Basically, elephant corridor is a simple solution to a very complicated problem. Basically, elephant corridors are strips of land that connect areas of forest that have become separated. Often it's because people have started living there, communities have cropped up, or maybe there's a motorway or a road or a mine. Most of the time when people are living there, they want to move out because they didn't realise when they moved there that they were in the middle of a migratory route. So they were finding — certainly in Kerala, the people living in the corridor — that somebody would have to stay awake all night to make sure the elephants didn't come and eat their crops or trample a house. I'm sure you're aware of the conflicts going on between people and elephants.
So what happens is that we would move out the people who want to move and buy them a new house and give them a plot of land very near to where they were living, but outside of that conflict area. So then the elephants can once again move freely. By doing that you're helping tigers and orangutans and many other endangered animals as well.

AA: Are there many such elephant corridors in India?
RP: A total of 88 corridors have been identified all over India. Not all of those corridors will be viable, so we say we aim to do 50 of them. And by the time you finish moving people, creating houses and buying the land back, it's around £1 million per corridor, this is why you talk about a £50 million target in the next 10 years, that's where that figure comes from. We wouldn't necessarily buy the land for the corridors, we might just lease it so that nobody builds on the land.

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