The purpose of The Elephant Charter is to provide a set of guiding Principles, based on elephant biology, to form a touchstone for anyone needing to address elephant interests. Buttressed by its Appendix, The Elephant Charter represents a consensus of the nature of elephants. It is intended to promote scientifically sound and ethical management and care of all elephants, providing guidance to law and policy makers, enforcement agencies and the courts, organizations, institutions and international bodies, as well as to managers of wild and captive elephants.

The Elephant Charter is independent of any particular group or institution. Rather, its force comes from the expertise and stature of the elephant biologists who are its signatories. Its authors, Joyce Poole, Cynthia Moss, Raman Sukumar, Andrea Turkalo and Katy Payne are eminent elephant field biologists representing the longest studied populations of African savannah, Asian and African forest elephants: the elephants of Amboseli, Mudumalai and Dzanga Bai. With four decades of groundbreaking research on wild elephants, together with the research of our many colleagues, we are collectively in a position to speak with confidence about the interests of elephants wherever they may be.

We invite all elephant biologists and practitioners to join us as Signatories of The Elephant Charter, and to take ownership of the sentiments reflected and to uphold its Principles.

On a separate page, we extend an invitation to members of the public, who wish to make their voices heard, to add their names as Supporting Signatories.

Our individual and collective voices are vital to the future of elephants.