ELEPHANT PROSTHETICS

A warm welcome to our Asian Elephant Prosthetics website.

The natural habitat for the Asian Elephant (Elephas maximus) extends across the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia from India in the west, Nepal in the north, Sumatra (Indonesia) in the south, and to Borneo (Indonesia and Malaysia) in the east.
The Asian elephant is the largest living land animal in Asia. Since 1986, the Asian elephant has been listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List, as the population has declined by at least 50 percent over the last three elephant generations, which is about 60–75 years. It is primarily threatened by loss of habitat, habitat degradation, fragmentation and poaching.¹

In addition to these challenges, Asian Elephants also face another series of dangers, that of traumatization from human related activities, including but not limited to, land mines, snares, and logging / road traffic accidents, leaving individual elephants severely disabled with missing limbs.

Not only is the underlying cause of such incidents traumatic for the elephant at the time of the injury but given that life span of Asian Elephants is more than half a century, the elephants must manage with their injury for the remainder of their lives.

This elephantprosthetics.org website is dedicated to creating awareness of the extent of the problem, the underlying causes, as well as helping individual traumatized Asian Elephants overcome their disability with the fitting of prosthetic (artificial) limbs over their lifetime.

We are currently trying to determine the level of support we might achieve from corporations as well as individuals so that we can officially open a registered charity to support these elephants.

Please take the time to look at our ‘concept website’, and feel free to submit comments and suggestions. We have much more in planning stage that has yet to be built into the website, but for now, this concept website should give you a reasonable look and feel for our final version. At the same time, we would welcome you to complete this simple link (only two minutes to complete) to help us better understand the level of financial support (i.e., a pledge) we might achieve from you / your company.

Thank you for your kind attention, your interest in this concept project and of course for your concern for these disabled elephants.

Steven Bukvic
Founder, Project Lead

To date in a preliminary web-search, we have so far identified nine elephants (we are continuing to expand our search moving forward) in Asia with prosthetic limbs with the underlying source of injuries being quite varied (e.g., snares, land mines, traffic accidents, logging accidents) and it is clear that such potential sources of traumatic injury are unlikely to disappear anytime soon. Taking into account these latter points and because Asian elephants have a relatively long lifespan (on average a little under 50 years) we have identified the need to design and develop a comprehensive Asian elephant prosthetic support programme with the specific goal to help share best ‘elephant prosthetic’ practice across the various organizations caring for these unfortunate, disabled elephants.

The over-arching goals of this long-term project are to:

• Identify and assemble an interdisciplinary team of specialists (‘steering committee’) to manage the overall project.
• Establish a registered non-profit organization for the long-term management of the project.
• Compile and maintain basic demographic data regarding wild Asian elephant populations, superimposed with available data regarding potential ‘risk of traumatic leg injuries’ to the respective populations.
• Identify and maintain a registry of all known disabled Asian elephants currently with or without prosthetics limbs.
• Assess the current status of elephant prosthetic management across support organizations and countries and conduct a ‘gap analysis’ (to help understand what is happening now; understand the extent of the challenges faced and to help clarify future objectives).
• Develop a central resource for sharing best practices (including, but not limited to areas such as the design, construction materials and manufacture of prosthetic limbs, care facilities and long-term management of elephants with prosthetic limbs).
• To develop new data-driven technology solutions in elephant prosthetics (e.g., in the areas of gait analysis, bionic design of the prosthetic limbs).
• Build global awareness of the problem to identify and secure sustainable funding through, a dedicated website site, social media platforms as well as through connections with existing charities / non-governmental organizations / educational institutions with interest in Asian elephants.
• Design, develop and maintain a sustainable, ‘living’ project plan that encompasses the above project goals.

Ellie is an amputated baby elephant that was rescued from Jeli, Kelantan, Malaysia. The lower part of her right leg was amputated by a snare trap, meant for wild boars. Ellie was found by responsible rescuers and was sent to her new home in Kuala Gandah Elephant Sanctuary. Ellie’s prosthesis needs to change every 6 months due to the rapid growth of elephants.

Ellie is the only elephant in Malaysia that needs a prosthetic leg.

The opportunity to sponsor Ellie shows an organization's concern towards Malaysian Elephants, a protected species that is also a favourite icon for children and adults alike. Ellie's case is one of a kind in Malaysia, and sponsoring Ellie means the organization is alert of elephants' importance as natural architects of the forest. It shows that the sponsor truly understand the need to protect the elephant and to care for their wellbeing.