Many of these programs have very fraught ethics and it’s difficult to tell the good from the bad.Īnd finally, if you are looking for a truly unique gift, consider buying something from Poo Poo Paper. If you are a traveler, I would strongly discourage you from participating in tourism that involves washing, walking or riding elephants. I personally donate time and money to WCN and can attest to both their ethics and their effectiveness. They have partnered with Wildlife Conservation Network (WCN) to develop an Elephant Crisis Fund, which has funded 348 projects throughout Africa and Asia. Ian Douglas-Hamilton is the premier elephant conservationist and his team in Kenya lead efforts for not only their HQ in Kenya’s Samburu Reserve, but around the world. If you would like to learn more about elephant conservation, you would be hard pressed to find a better organization than Save the Elephants. The following 9 elephant novels cover the gamut, from angry marauding elephants to the work of conservationists, circus and menagerie mahouts and there are even a few elephants at the center of a mystery. We’ve split this list evenly between fiction and non-fiction. And I’m joyfully marrying those two interests together with this list of books on elephants. I’m also a long-term volunteer and donor to wildlife conservation causes.

I’m a recovering bookseller, who still loves nothing more than recommending cool books to people. You can trust me to recommend these books for you. Pull up your Goodreads because we’ve got 18 truly amazing books about elephants for you to add to your TBR list. And if that’s you, then we have a perfect reading list for you. But people who love elephants, really love elephants. Perhaps it’s their fierce loyalty, their female-forward power structure, long memories or sheer strength. Despite our differences in size and shape, humans relate so profoundly to elephants.

An elephant in the garden