The herd, National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson Hole (WY)
Beauty in Motion
As 100 handcrafted elephants journey across the U.S. to spark conversation around coexistence, Chantecaille’s Lip Crème supports Elephant Family’s mission to honor Indigenous wisdom, restore wild habitats, and remind us what it means to share space—gracefully.
Ruth Ganesh has a gift for making big ideas move—literally. As the head of Elephant Family US, she’s the creative force behind The Great Elephant Migration, a 5,000-mile public art odyssey that’s bringing handcrafted elephant sculptures made in the Nilgiri Hills of Southern India to cities across the U.S. In the process, she’s turning the conversation around conservation into something joyful, visually arresting, and rooted in Indigenous wisdom. That’s why we knew we wanted to partner with her and with Elephant Family (again! our Summer Lip Veil in 2019 supported the conservation charity), to make an even bigger impact with the launch of Lip Crème. We asked Ruth about the inspiration behind this wild undertaking and how it’s helping to protect people and wildlife.
We last worked with you on a Lip Veil partnership when you were a Trustee for Elephant Family UK. Can you share a bit about the charity’s original mission and how Elephant Family US extends it?
Asia’s elephants are flagships for human-wildlife coexistence; you have the world’s biggest land mammal living in the world’s most populous country—India. Yet they are tolerated, along with tigers, rhinos, lions… you name it. It is the only country in the world where the human population has doubled alongside the doubling in populations of key megafauna over the past 30 years. Coexistence is in the DNA of India. There is this constant navigation of shared space, and a reverence for all living beings. This is a story for the world, and between our UK and US entities, we are sharing it through the vehicle of large-scale public art campaigns and using the millions of dollars these exhibitions raise to power projects that help the human race better share space, for Asia’s endangered elephants and all the other species—including us humans—that share habitat.
Here in the US, we have gone one step further and expanded our mission beyond Asia, to enable harmonious coexistence between people and animals wherever in the world they overlap. So we are exporting the story on a bigger scale. By harnessing the immense power of creativity and storytelling, we are now supporting projects in Kenya with lions, jaguars in Argentina and of course our beloved elephants in Asia.
Another defining feature of our efforts is to promote projects where possible that are Indigenous led. The lantana elephants that feature in our flagship campaign, The Great Elephant Migration, were created by members of the Adivasi - the original dwellers of the land - for whom coexistence is more of a philosophy about how to live in the world and understanding our place within this great web of life, where every living being is respected and is understood to be alive and imbued with a soul. When you perceive the world like this, coexistence is no longer a conservation concept but simply a way of life.
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Right: Ruth Ganesh at The Real Elephant Collective HQ in the Nilgiri Hills
What exactly do you mean by “coexistence” and why is this such an important focus in conservation today?
Around the world, animals are navigating landscapes transformed by human development.
Traditional conservation has focused on creating strict separations between humans and nature, like fences or protected zones. But in today’s world, where human presence touches nearly every part of the planet, that approach alone is no longer enough. Most wildlife now lives outside of protected areas, in landscapes shared with people.
Coexistence is about balance. It acknowledges that both people and wildlife have needs and that solutions must respect the rights, safety, and livelihoods of communities, while also protecting the species and ecosystems they live alongside. It’s especially urgent now, in the face of climate change, habitat loss, and biodiversity decline. Coexistence offers a hopeful path forward.
Elephant Family is known for very fun and colorful events (The Big Egg Hunt) in service of raising awareness for conservation, which can be stubbornly resistant to public attention and engagement. What was the origin of the idea of the Migration?
Large-scale art and storytelling are more powerful orators than any human voice. A herd of 100 elephants immediately spreads a smile, a sense of wonder and joy, and moves people to want to know more. Art and storytelling work where data and facts fail.
The Migration was born in my mind in the immediate aftermath of losing our amazing founder, Mark Shand, in New York back in 2014. I had a sort of vision to make a herd of elephants from flowers and migrate them across the States, but no idea how to make it happen! In researching ideas and materials, I came across a man that changed my whole life and perspective, Dr Tarsh Thekaerara, a leading elephant conservationist from the Nilgiri Hills in Tamil Nadu, whose entire life’s work has been around elephants and the indigenous communities who live with them in the densest concentrations anywhere in the world. He is also a world-leading authority on invasive lantana, the material from which the herd is made—which is choking Asian elephant habitats and driving animals out from Protected Areas.
Tarsh and his wife, Shubhra—who is in her own right a talented artist and designer and created the frame designs - along with Subash, whose unique communication skills have enabled the creation of the herd by the indigenous community in that landscape, and Tarsh’s brother Tariq, who also had input into the design of the elephants, adding eyes and details and now makes all the mini elephants out of another invasive wood, which sell out in seconds—taught me so much.
Each is a replica of a real wild elephant living alongside the Indigenous communities who create the sculptures, in south India’s Nilgiri Hills. They give people a sense of walking amongst a real herd, and allow them to imagine what it is like to live alongside the world’s biggest land mammal.
The migration has evolved from a desire to commemorate a man who gave his life to this incredible animal and do it in the most perfect and sustainable way possible, to a movement that champions indigenous perspectives on how to relate to our planet and all life within it.
There are a lot of moving pieces to the Great Elephant Migration—literally and figuratively. First, how large are the herds you are moving, how are you moving them, where have they been, and where are they going?
The migration is the 5,000-mile, coast-to-coast journey of 100 life-sized elephants, so there are a lot of logistical gymnastics involved! The herd began their journey in July 2024 on the clifftops of Newport in Rhode Island, where they arrived by boat all the way from the Nilgiri Hills in South India. Following two months outside the Newport Mansions, they migrated to the cobblestones of New York City’s Meatpacking District, Miami Beach for Art Basel, Houston (TX), Jackson Hole (WY), Browning (MT) and now, one year on, they are just about to reach the finish line in Beverly Hills.
They travel on large flatbed trailers, with help from SEKO Logistics and IBI International Logistics, who keep the elephants safe as they travel and ensure their footprint is as light as possible.
To offset this, the migration also supports an innovative biochar project. Lantana is the invasive weed which the sculptures are made from. It is removed on a large-scale and converted into biochar, which improves soil fertility and water retention. Biochar is the only feasible direct capture solution for sequestering carbon into the ground to mitigate climate change—the biggest problem humanity faces today. The project will restore vast areas of forests over the next five years. By the close of 2025, this effort will have sequestered 2,625 tons of carbon.
India’s Nilgiri Hills have the densest overlap of people and elephants found anywhere in the world.
Tell us about the Lantana camara elephants—where and how are they made, and how is their fabrication part of the larger mission of the Migration?
The elephants are handcrafted by The Real Elephant Collective—a sustainable Indigenous enterprise in Southern India’s Nilgiri Hills, who have come to know the elephants they live alongside by name and personality. The sculptures are made from Lantana Camara, an invasive plant which has taken over more than 40% of South India’s forests. As it has spread, it has suffocated native plant species and pushed animals from their habitat, causing damage to eco-systems and pushing animals and people into further contact. The creation of the sculptures helps to fund the large-scale removal of the weed, allowing more space for animals to roam.
This approach is at the heart of The Great Elephant Migration’s mission to champion Indigenous and community-led conservation and to show that solutions to the world’s biggest environmental challenges are often rooted in the knowledge, creativity, and resilience of the communities closest to nature.
Each elephant is a life-sized replica of real elephant known to the artisans by name and personality.
Since the herd began their journey last year, The Migration has raised over $2.5 million and counting to power human-wildlife coexistence projects.
Why is it important to underscore that these conservation efforts are Indigenous-led?
For thousands of years, Indigenous communities have been guardians of the environment. Although they are approximately 6% of the global population, they protect 80% of the biodiversity left on earth. Indigenous Peoples’ sophisticated cultures, societies, economies, and scientific systems give rise to a holistic conservation approach. Their knowledge systems are place-based, adaptive, and incredibly effective, yet they’ve historically been overlooked or undervalued in mainstream conservation efforts. By highlighting Indigenous-led efforts, we’re trying to shift that narrative. We’re acknowledging the authority, innovation, and rights of communities who have always been at the frontlines of conservation.
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How have the herd been received in each city? Can you share any memorable examples of how the herd “adapted” to its new habitat, and how locals interacted with their new wild guests?
The response has been overwhelmingly positive. People of all ages and backgrounds have met the herd with such curiosity and joy! The elephants have made themselves at home in such a variety of landscapes, with hundreds of thousands of people walking amongst them and engaging with their message. The children ‘feed’ them grass in their trunks, and they have received thousands of hugs and kisses! They make a big impression, and every time we move on somewhere new, people tell us how much they will be missed.
Lip Crème will support Elephant Family’s coexistence efforts in Southern India, harking back to the cause we partnered on more than 5 years ago. Can you share a little bit more about the impact EF has had in that region since our last project, and what the priorities and needs are now?
Since our last collaboration, the work in Southern India has expanded significantly. We’ve supported up-and-coming young conservationists working on human-wildlife coexistence through a fellowship scheme, funded early warning systems that reduce conflict, powered the large-scale removal of invasive Lantana Camara from habitats, and continued to grow The Real Elephant Collective, which makes the elephants and now employs approximately 300 Adivasi - making it India’s largest indigenous owned, sustainable enterprise.
The priorities now are about deepening those roots and scaling up what works, whilst responding to new pressures and ensuring that the communities who live alongside elephants are at the heart of these efforts. Chantecaille’s continued support helps make that possible.
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