Sunday 12 August is World Elephant Day and staff at Taronga Western Plains Zoo are raising their trunks to celebrate with a number of activities on the day for guests to enjoy.

“World Elephant Day is an annual event and an opportunity to raise awareness for the plight of elephants in the wild, as well as educate guests about what we do here at the Zoo with our Asian Elephant herd,” said Elephant Keeper, Josie Montgomery.

“We have a range of activities planned for World Elephant Day at the Zoo including face painting, a touch table, photo booth, colour-in competition, free behind the scenes elephant barn tours and a special enrichment feed for our herd.”

The barn tours will take place between 12pm – 1pm whilst face painting and other activities will run from 10am – 1pm, with the special enrichment feed at 10am.

There will also be a special World Elephant Day keeper talk at 11:45am which is a great opportunity to learn more about the elephants that call Dubbo home and to also chat to the Zoo’s Elephant Keepers.

“As part of World Elephant Day we are also encouraging members of the public to turn their Facebook profile pictures to black and white and add our Facebook frame to ‘Go Grey’ and raise awareness for elephants on World Elephant Day,” said Josie.

The special World Elephant day profile picture frame can be downloaded from the Taronga Western Plains Zoo Facebook page. Be sure to use the hash tag #gogreyworldelephantday.

Taronga Western Plains Zoo is now home to nine Asian Elephants following the birth of a female calf named Kanlaya on 14 June 2018.

“Kanlaya is continuing to progress well through her milestones and now weighs 154kg. Kanlaya generally stays by mum, Porntip’s side on exhibit, but is starting to venture away and explore her surrounds a little more,” said Josie.

Asian Elephants are classified as critically endangered. There are approximately 40,000  Asian Elephants left in the wild so this breeding program is very important to ensure a self-sustaining population in Australia and more importantly, to help secure a future for the species.