African Parks Commits $25.5 Million towards Clinton Global Initiative Pledge on Elephant Conservation

African Parks has joined forces with fellow conservation groups to announce a three-year $80 million Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Commitment to Action to help stop the slaughter of Africa’s elephants.

Through the substantial support of donors, African Parks was able to commit $25.5 million, or nearly a third, of the total $80 million funding pledge announced by the Clinton Global Initiative during the UN General Assembly meeting in New York on September 26th. African Parks’s primary funding partners include the European Union, the Dutch Postcode Lottery, WWF-The Netherlands, RAPAC, the Global Environment Facility, the Walton Family Foundation and the Adessium Foundation. Several private individual and family foundations in the USA and Europe also support the long-term management of protected areas that African Parks drives.

The $80 million pledged will help protect elephants at 50 sites across Africa for the next three years, including eight national parks or wildlife reserves in which African Parks is involved in protecting. The commitment was announced at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting in terms of its 2013 theme, Mobilising for Action, alongside an appeal for an additional $70 million in support over the next three years to help reverse the decline of Africa’s elephants. The announcement was galvanised by the work of Hilary Clinton while serving as Secretary of State, as well as by Clinton Foundation Vice-Chair Chelsea Clinton.

Tens of thousands of elephants are killed illegally each year across Africa with some 35,000 slaughtered in 2012 alone. The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Commitment to Action attempts to address the elephant poaching problem on three fronts: stop the killing; stop the trafficking; and stop the demand. Other organisations making the pledge include the Wildlife Conservation Society, the African Wildlife Foundation, Conservation International, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the World Wildlife Fund, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the Frankfurt Zoological Society, the Freeland Foundation, the Howard Buffett Foundation, the International Conservation Caucus Foundation, National Geographic, Save the Elephants, TRAFFIC, WildAid and WildLifeDirect. Several African nations have also joined in the pledge, including Botswana, Cote D’Ivoire, Gabon, Kenya, South Sudan, Malawi, and Uganda.

Established in 2005 by President Bill Clinton, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) convenes global leaders to innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. CGI Annual Meetings have brought together more than 150 heads of state, 20 Nobel Prize laureates, and hundreds of leading CEOs, heads of foundations and NGOs, major philanthropists, and members of the media.