Creating a wilderness lodge at Elsa’s Kopje was just the start of a long and fruitful relationship between the Elewana Collection and the globally significant Born Free Foundation in Kenya’s Meru National Park.
Joy and George Adamson famously raised an orphaned lion cub named Elsa at Meru in the late 1950s. They wrote the bestselling Born Free about the experience, a book that was turned into a hit 1964 movie of the same name starring Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna. Twenty years later, the two actors founded the Born Free Foundation to ensure the welfare of all animals worldwide and keep wildlife in the wild.
The foundation has brown to include the Zoo Check campaign, Elefriends Campaign, Wolf Campaign, Dolphin Campaign, Primate Campaign, Big Cat Campaign, and the Bear Campaign to fight the ivory trade and hunting as a form of sport, challenge the exploitation of animals in circuses and zoos, and oppose killing wild animals as bush meat.
Stefano Cheli designed and built Elsa Kopje in the late 1990s on a rocky outcrop overlooking the site of George Adamson’s bush camp. The spectacular lodge eventually became part of the Elewana Collection and a partnership with the Born Free Foundation that continues to this day.
The foundation recently launched Save Meru’s Giants, a new conservation program focused on protecting the park’s highly threatened elephants and reticulated giraffe. Born Free’s specialist elephant and giraffe team will work with the local community to mitigate human-wildlife conflict that is a particular threat to these species.
Activities will include building beehive fences around farms (bees are proven to deter elephants) and running workshops on conservation, elephant behavior and how to prevent conflict. Five elephant guardians, recruited from the local area, will work with Born Free to increase awareness about conservation and help families peacefully coexist with wildlife.
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