Friday, February 23, 2018

SRI LANKA ~ Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage ~

... Lovely view of a bathing elephant herd... ...🐘"The gentle giants of the jungle"🐘 .... this orphanage has had many mixed reviews about it... is it a tourist trap or a peaceful sanctuary??... after reading many articles about it I think it should be seen as a conservation project maybe not perfect but doing a lot of good work... there goal is to protect, rescuing and caring for the Sri Lankan elephant... an animal at the risk of becoming extinct... they saving baby elephants without their mothers... in most of these cases the mother had either died or been killed... the only problem is, they would not be able to survive if they go back in the wild...  you can follow the elephants' daily routine, including feeding time and their twice-daily bath in the local river... and to fund the conservation, tourism is necessary... Big Thanks dear Ravindra!! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Photo: Juergen Schreiber - © Lasantha Lakmal

The Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage was started in 1975 by the Department of Wildlife Conservation on a twenty five acre coconut property on the Maha Oya river at Rambukkana. When the orphanage opened in there were 5 elephants, now there are 88 of them.

Asian elephants are known to be one of the most gentle and intelligent mammals. There are three subspecies of Asian elephant – the Indian, Sumatran and Sri Lankan. The Sri Lankan is physically the largest of the subspecies, and also the darkest in colour. They can be identified by their small, rounded ears and are quite a bit smaller than their cousins, the African elephants. They are about 3.4 m tall, can weigh up to 5,400 kg. and consume about 200 kg of foliage and grass per day and plenty of water for drinking and bathing.

Stamps:

2X Pigeon Island Marine National Park
(Issued 22-08-2014)

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