Elephant Campaign: The most successful appeal in the Independent's history

All money donated will be spent on conservation

The Elephant Appeal raised a clamour ahead of the conference last week (Alamy)

The Independent’s 2013 Elephant Appeal was the most successful appeal in the newspaper’s history. More than £500,000 was raised to combat the poaching crisis that was resulting in around 100 elephants being killed every day for their ivory.

The money helped finance new teams of wildlife rangers and run community education projects, as well as help establish a new 65,000-acre wildlife conservancy in central Kenya.

Evgeny Lebedev, the owner of the Independent and Evening Standard newspapers, gave a heartfelt thanks to readers for their generosity in supporting the campaign.

“In my recent visits to Africa to see the work undertaken by Space for Giants I was left in no doubt as to the urgency of this problem,” he said. “Africa’s elephants are under grave threat from increasingly well-equipped poaching gangs. The generosity shown by Independent and Evening Standard readers will make a great difference in helping ensure the long-term survival of this species.”

The Independent campaign was launched to increase awareness about the problem and raise funds for Space for Giant’s animal-protection projects. All money donated was spent on conservation with none going towards the charity’s administrative costs.

For more information about Space for Giants, including updates on how the money was spent, go to http://spaceforgiants.org/