Elephant Crisis Fund

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Elephant Crisis Fund

The ECF is helping prevent the ivory crisis and ensuring elephants are no longer under threat.

It is run by Save the Elephants and Wildlife Conservation Network. The ECF, launched in 2013 supports projects across Africa and in ivory consuming countries which aim to stop the killing of elephants, prevent the trafficking, and put an end to the buying of ivory. Funding is given with minimal bureaucracy and no administrative deductions to allow donors to have maximum impact, and for partners to

act quickly and effectively. To date, the ECF has supported 310 projects from 88 organisations across 40 countries each vetted for their efficiency and impact. With the continued generosity of our donors, the best ideas and most urgent actions to end the ivory crisis and ensure elephants are no longer under threat receive the support they need so that Africa remains wild with elephants.

08/18/2026

Vietnamese authorities have seized 1,193kg of elephant ivory at Quy Nhon port - the largest ivory seizure recorded globally since 2024. The 221 pieces were discovered hidden in secret compartments inside wooden crates, in a shipment which apparently originated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, before passing through the Republic of the Congo and on to Asia. Some arrests have been made and investigations are ongoing. Vietnam remains one of the world's major hubs for illegal wildlife trafficking. https://bit.ly/4wCYHcO

📸 Alex Hofford

08/12/2026

This , we are celebrating Africa's elephants, the extraordinary range of places they call home, and the partners and people working to protect them.

From Congo's forests to the desert edge of Namibia, to the wetlands of South Sudan's Sudd, elephants have adapted to almost every landscape the continent offers. Some populations thrive within well-protected ranges, while others contend with poaching or shrinking habitat, and each landscape brings its own story of resilience.

The ECF supports partners across this whole spectrum, from multinational bodies to grassroots initiatives, providing funding, technical support, and connections between people working towards one shared goal: a secure future for Africa's elephants.

📸 Frank af Petersens, Courtesy of Panthera, Courtesy of Tsavo Trust, Courtesy of EHRA and Chris Thouless.

08/03/2026

What happens when a community gets the right tools?

On the Charara boundary in Zimbabwe's Middle Zambezi Valley, crop-raiding incidents dropped from 74 in April 2025 to just 5 in April 2026. Across the first half of the year, human-elephant conflict in the Chiufe and Vuti communities fell from 139 incidents to 77. 🙌

The difference? Chilli. 🌶️

With support from the Elephant Crisis Fund, The Zambezi Society and local communities molded 4,000 chilli bricks and have already put over 3,000 to use, a simple, low-cost deterrent that elephants steer clear of. Alongside 14km of maintained fencing, it's giving farmers a real chance to protect their harvest without harming the wildlife they share the land with. 🐘

Proof that the right tools, in the right hands, change outcomes.

📸 Collin Tapi and Isaac Siakakaye

07/31/2026

This World Ranger Day, we celebrate those committed to protecting Africa's elephants - the men and women who work in the field every day, often at personal risk.

From ground patrols in DR Congo's dangerous Upemba National Park, to monitoring elephants amid conflict in South Sudan's Western Equatoria, to protecting Nigeria's lowland rainforest in Okomu National Park, these are the teams keeping some of Africa's most important landscapes safe.

Rangers face challenges few of us will ever confront, including extreme conditions and armed threats. Today, we thank rangers across Africa for their courage and their commitment. They are the guardians of some of the world's most threatened landscapes and wildlife.

📸 Jophie Clark, Chris Thouless and Frank Pope

Nigeria National Park Service ANI_Foundation Forgotten Parks Foundation ICCN Fauna & Flora

07/30/2026

Wonderful to see this ECF-funded Bat Hawk and pilot in action over Upemba National Park - UNP in the DRC - watching over elephants and detecting illegal activity.

07/29/2026

How do you teach a child to live safely alongside elephants? In Kariba, you hand them a VR headset.

In the first half of 2026, The Zambezi Society, with funding from the Elephant Crisis Fund, ran 44 virtual reality coexistence sessions across Kariba's primary schools, and resumed sessions at Rifa Education Camp, immersing students in what it means to safely share the landscape with wildlife.

Beyond VR, awareness assemblies reached more than 8,400 learners across primary and secondary schools, plus workshops with local business operators on understanding elephant behaviour and reducing conflict.

Coexistence is about safeguarding livelihoods while ensuring the next generation is growing up to see elephants as neighbours, not threats.

📸 Rumbidzai Bukuta

07/27/2026

High above Tsavo, a small aircraft keeps watch over the last great tuskers of Africa. Kenya's Tsavo Conservation Area holds the country's biggest elephant population, over 17,000, and the highest remaining concentration of Super Tuskers left on the continent.

Watching over them is Tsavo Trust's aerial unit, flying joint patrols with Kenya Wildlife Service. From above, the team monitors Tsavo's 10 named Super Tusker bulls, detects carcasses and poaching activity for rapid follow-up, and gives air support to ground teams responding to human-elephant conflict on park boundaries. In 2025, more than 870 elephants were pushed out of farmland here alone. Our new grant supports around 71 hours of this flying over the coming five months.

A gap in the sky is a gap in protection. We are making sure there isn't one.

📸 Tsavo Trust

07/20/2026

1,100+ people. 3 beekeeping groups. 1 shared goal: living alongside elephants.

Across 23 villages in Tanzania's Katavi-Mahale corridor, communities are at the heart of elephant conservation, attending village assemblies, training as monitors, and learning to respond when elephants come close.

In the first four months of 2026, Frankfurt Zoological Society, retrained 46 community monitors on safe data collection and conflict response. 68 human-wildlife conflict incidents were recorded and not a single human injury or fatality among them.

In Rukoma Village, three newly formed beekeeping groups are adding another layer of protection. Elephants are naturally averse to bees, making hives an effective, non-harmful barrier between crops and elephants while giving families a new source of income at the same time.

This is what ECF partners do through our funding: not just protecting elephants, but building the community foundations that make coexistence last.

📸 Agriphina Cletus

07/17/2026

A notable update on legal proceedings involving convicted wildlife trafficker and Chinese national, Yunhua Lin, in Malawi.

Yesterday, the High Court ruled against the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Anti Corruption Bureau’s request to withdraw corruption charges against Lin.

Campaigners and conservation groups have welcomed this ruling as a pivotal moment, in a country that has made significant progress against wildlife crime but where law enforcement remains inconsistent.

🔗 Read more: https://tinyurl.com/msb77dsc

07/14/2026

In 2016, 58 elephants were recorded poached in the Lower Zambezi. In 2025, that number was 4.

But the work isn't finished. Elephants don't stay inside park boundaries. They range across a 20,000 km² biodiverse landscape into the Chiawa, Rufunsa and Luano Game Management Areas, where communities and wildlife share the same land. When elephants damage crops and property, retaliatory killing follows. That conflict-driven mortality is now one of the primary threats to elephants in this landscape.

The ECF is funding Conservation Lower Zambezi - CLZ to establish a community-led human-wildlife conflict unit in the Game Management Areas, equipping households with non-lethal deterrents, and working toward empowering a community conservancy that legally secures critical elephant corridors.

Protecting the Lower Zambezi means protecting the full landscape for elephants.

📸 Francois d'Elbee

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http://elephantcrisisfund.org/

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