It sounds like the plot of Disney’s next blockbuster: a herd of captive African elephants reared in Kent are flown to Kenya to roam free on the savannah. This isn’t fiction, though, but an ambitious “world-first” project announced last week by the Aspinall Foundation. The conservation charity is headed by the gambling millionaire Damian Aspinall and in January hired Carrie Johnson, the wife of the prime minister, as its PR guru. The fundraising campaign (the charity wants to raise £1 million) got off to a triumphant start. Johnson and Aspinall co-wrote a piece for The Sun pledging that “in time, [the elephants’] descendants will number in the hundreds — and then the thousands”.

Source: The Times July 10, 2021 23:01 UTC