At only 3 months of age, Agam was found trapped in a well. Alone, scared, abandoned, he was rescued and placed in the PLG Saree in Indonesia where he is being rehabilitated.
At 10 months old, Agam is still being fed milk supplements around the clock to make up for the nutrients he’s missing from his mother’s milk. In the wild, babies nurse 4-5 years, until the birth of the next calf.
In Aceh, Indonesia, Agam is one of three orphan elephants who have required emergency care in the area. The other two orphans, Raja and Raju, sadly did not survive. Motherless elephants have a high mortality rate. It is a long, uphill battle to successfully raise and rehabilitate them.
These orphans are the outcome of the human-elephant conflict present in Indonesia. In fact in most countries across the Asian elephant’s range, it has replaced poaching as the major human cause of elephant mortality.
Under pressure from higher population densities and lack of fodder, elephant populations are increasingly turning to crop raiding for sustenance. Interestingly, it’s not just the search of food that attracts elephants to villages, but alcohol. When they smell alcohol brewing, they have been known to attack and destroy villages to get to it.
This overlapping of territory, and fragmenting of their usual space and routes, is pushing the Asian Elephant into the brink of extinction. The population is estimated to have dropped 50-75% in the last 60 years.
An iPledge campaign is up and running to enable the purchase of Agam’s life-saving supplements. Support Agam here.
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