Elephant Conservation Project Stalled by Trump-Era Foreign Aid Freeze

In 2025, a scientist's long-running project to study Asian elephant cognition and mitigate human-elephant conflict has been stalled due to a freeze on U.S. foreign aid under the Trump administration. For the past 20 years, Joshua Plotnik has been systematically identifying and profiling over 300 individual elephants in Thailand's Salakpra Wildlife Sanctuary, with the goal of using this data to develop targeted solutions to the growing problem of human-elephant conflict.

Plotnik's team had recently created a specialized "targeted personality device" that can play sounds, display lights, and release predator scents to deter specific elephants from raiding crop fields. However, the majority of the project's funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was cut in January 2025 when the Trump administration froze foreign aid. Plotnik says the sudden loss of funding has been "devastating," forcing the team to operate month-to-month as they search for alternative sources of support.

Despite the setback, Plotnik remains committed to the conservation of Asian elephants, emphasizing the vital role they play in maintaining biodiversity and the responsibility of the global community to protect them. He laments the Trump administration's decision, which he says has "practically overnight" shut off the influential American taxpayer dollars that have long supported international conservation efforts.