June 18, 2010– The International Day of Action for Elephants in Zoos (IDAEZ) takes place this Saturday (June 19, 2010), with more than 30 events in five countries. You can help the elephants, even if you don’t live near a zoo, in two ways:

1. Send a message to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that they must put animal welfare over zoos’ interests. Sign the letter here.
2. Participate in the Virtual Demonstrations on Facebook and Twitter. Details here.

As I wrote last week, the plight of elephants in zoos around the world is tied to the plight of elephants in the wild in two ways. First, if wild elephants are threatened by poachers, environmental devastation, and human encroachment, then many zoos feel that the only hope for conservation is to remove elephants from their natural habitat and imprison them in small enclosures.

Secondly, elephants in zoos die (sometimes decades) earlier than if left in the wild. Part of this is due to infections and diseases they contract in their small enclosures; the other reason is elephants are too intelligent and emotional to be caged or fenced for life, which can lead to depression or violent behavior. Nevertheless, to keep the zoo populations high for “conservation” and “education” reasons, they need to have a steady supply of elephants from the wild, thus fueling the poachers or governments to capture the endangered wild elephants they are trying to conserve.

It’s a depressing cycle, but we can make a difference by:

• Educating our friends and families not to attend zoos or circuses that involve elephants
• Demanding that our local zoos ban importing any wild elephants to their zoos
• Demanding that elephants in zoos and circuses be allowed to “retire” to sanctuaries, like The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee or PAWS, the Performing Animal Welfare Society, in California, instead of being passed around and mistreated.

In Defense of Animals (IDA) needs our help to make this year’s Day of Action an even greater success. For more information please visit their web site.

The Facebook event can be found at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=102256893153605&ref=mf

We’ll see you (virtually) tomorrow!

-Windy Borman

Director/Producer, “The Eyes of Thailand“

Thank you to everyone who attended The Eyes of Thailand Work-in-Progress Clip premiere at King of Thai Noodle, viewed the clip online, and participated in the 3-Day Buy Chocolate, Save Elephants online fundraiser through Choclatique.

The fundraising results are in and I’m happy to report we raised:

$615.00 from donations at the door

$115.95 through chocolate sales at Choclatique

All donations are tax-deductible through the film’s fiscal sponsor, the San Francisco Film Society, and go toward the post-production costs of editing and distributing The Eyes of Thailand documentary in 2010.

Based on the success of the fundraiser and requests from our Facebook group members, I will re-release the Work-in-Progress clip (with a new link and password) in November 2009.  In order to receive the password, please join The Eyes of Thailand Facebook Group. Please stay tuned for more details…

Thank you again for all your support!

Windy Borman

Producer, Writer and Director, The Eyes of Thailand

P.S. To learn more about the film, view the trailer (different from the work-in-progress clip), and make a tax-deductible donation to the film, please visit http://www.eyesofthailand.com