World Elephant Day 2026

This World Elephant Day, we’re celebrating the incredible elephants that call Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm home, while shining a spotlight on the importance of providing dedicated spaces for male elephants.

Here at Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm, we’re home to five African Bull Elephants that call Elephant Eden home; Janu, Sutton, Uli, Impi and Mchumba. Their habitat is the largest elephant facility in the UK. The 20-acre habitat has been designed to give our African bull elephants plenty of space to explore, socialise and express their natural behaviours. 

Elephant Eden includes expansive fields, a large willow plantation, sand yards, a heated indoor barn and its very own swimming pool, giving our elephants plenty of opportunities to explore their surroundings throughout the year.

Why are bull elephant facilities so important? 

Dedicated facilities for bull elephants play an important role in the wider European African elephant breeding programme, which Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm is part of.

In the wild, young male elephants have a very different social life to females. African elephants live in close-knit family groups, usually made up of females and their young. As young males begin to reach sexual maturity, they will eventually leave their family group.

This usually happens when a bull is around 9–14 years old. The young male is encouraged to leave by the females in his family, including his mother, sisters, aunties and grandmothers. Once a young bull has left his family, he will often join a bachelor group - a group of male elephants of different ages and sizes. These groups are incredibly important for young bulls. Older, more dominant males can help teach younger elephants the social and behavioural skills they need to develop into successful adult bulls.

Learning from older bulls

Life within a bachelor group gives younger bulls the opportunity to learn from more experienced males.

As a young bull grows, he develops socially, mentally, behaviourally and physically. He learns how to interact with other males, understand social boundaries and navigate the complex hierarchy within the group.

Over time, as he becomes larger and more dominant, he will begin to move up the ranks and eventually have the opportunity to pass on what he has learned to younger bulls. This natural cycle of learning is an important part of elephant society, and providing space for groups of male elephants allows them to develop these behaviours.

Protected Contact Training 

Here at Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm, we use a protected contact approach when working with our elephants. This means that keepers and elephants are separated by a physical barrier during training and routine husbandry.

Protected contact allows our elephants to voluntarily participate in their care, helping to create positive, low-stress experiences during routine health checks and medical care. It also provides a safer environment for both the elephants and their keepers, while allowing our team to build strong, trusting relationships with the animals in their care.

Elephant Eden 

Our 20-acre Elephant Eden has been designed with the needs of African bull elephants in mind, providing plenty of space for our elephants to roam, explore and interact with one another.

The habitat includes a large willow plantation, which has been given time to regenerate and provide the elephants with new areas to explore, alongside expansive grassland, sand yards and a heated indoor barn.

There is also a large swimming pool, which provides opportunities for the elephants to cool off, play and display natural behaviours. By providing a spacious environment for our bull elephants, we can support their physical, social and behavioural development while contributing to the wider European breeding programme.

Elephants for Africa 

As home to African bull elephants, Noah's Ark Zoo Farm is passionate about supporting projects that protect elephants in the wild and help address the growing challenges they face. We were particularly inspired by Elephants for Africa's work studying and protecting male elephants, whose behaviours and conservation needs are often less understood.

Elephants for Africa is a conservation charity dedicated to protecting endangered African elephants through research, education and community collaboration. Established in 2008, they are one of the longer-running elephant research charities working in the region. Their work is based in Botswana, in and around the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park and the Boteti region, one of Africa's most important strongholds for elephants.

Their work focuses on increasing understanding of male elephants, reducing human-wildlife conflict and inspiring the next generation of conservation leaders. Young male elephants leaving the breeding herds are disproportionately involved in human-elephant conflict, often raiding crops as they disperse into farmland, while older bulls play a stabilising social role for younger males. Despite this, male elephants have historically been under-studied and misunderstood compared to breeding herds, leaving a gap in conservation planning and mitigation. Since beginning field observations in 2012, Elephants for Africa has built one of the longest-running behavioural datasets on male African elephants.

They work closely with local communities to encourage long-term coexistence between people and elephants. Their community work helps protect over 2,500 hectares of high-risk farmland from human-elephant conflict, while their environmental education programme, EleFun, reaches over 300 rural schoolchildren and young people across Botswana each year, building the next generation of local conservation leaders.

In 2025, Noah's Ark Zoo Farm began fundraising for Elephants for Africa. We support the charity through conservation education delivered in our workshops, keeper talks and onsite interpretation, helping visitors learn more about the challenges facing elephants in the wild. 

We also raise funds through our elephant experiences, World Elephant Day activities and wider engagement programmes. Conservation in the Makgadikgadi is demanding work, carried out far from the nearest town by a small team based at a remote research camp. The funds we raise help keep that team in the field, supporting the research, education and community work at the heart of the charity's mission.

Find out more about Elephants For Africa here!

Celebrating elephants this World Elephant Day

World Elephant Day is an opportunity to celebrate these incredible animals and learn more about the important role they play in our world.

When you visit Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm, make sure you head over to Elephant Eden to see our African bull elephants and discover more about their lives, behaviour and conservation.

Together, we can help raise awareness of elephants and the importance of protecting these incredible animals for generations to come.