On Jan 14th, 2023 LEAP advocates joined up with fellow advocates around the world to hold a candle light vigil for the 58 captive elephants that died in captivity in 2022. We had videos and photos sent in from around the world of their own private vigils. Unfortunately, due to Covid, (yet again) there were fewer group vigils held this year than in the past.
Individual Vigil Photos Video
March 21: The long awaited assessments on Lucy are released. While 3 independent candidates were agreed upon by Free the Wild and the Edmonton Valley Zoo, two of the three agreed Lucy could be moved to a sanctuary (see PDF files on Home Page), Free the Wild and the Edmonton Valley Zoo take the position of the one who said she was unable to move. Lucy is betrayed once again by an organization claiming to step in to 'help'. Why?? Click on the Free The Wild Image to Enlarge
April 15th: New videos and photos of Lucy taken for LEAP at the Edmonton Valley Zoo.
May 10th: Ingo clarifies his statement from his original assessment of Lucy in October 2022. (see his original assessment and clarification statement on our home page)
May 24th: Saengduean Lek Chailert from Elephant Nature Park, in the midst of moving an older, sicker elephant to sanctuary, shares her thoughts about moving Lucy (See her comments on our page "Expert Voices")
May 25th: Animal Justice is calling on police & the city auditor to investigate the Edmonton Valley Zoo after an investigation found the zoo made “unsubstantiated” claims that it needed millions in funding because enclosures weren’t meeting standards.
May 25th: New video sent to LEAP of Lucy trying to enjoy herself in a pathetic little pile of mud.
May 30th: Our billboard went up this weekend!!! This would not have been possible without the generosity of so many. To all of you who donated, we send an elephant sized thank you. We appreciated every donation that came in via paypal, etransfer and through our Gofundme page.
Special thanks to Dina Khan and Louise Lou. Without the 2 of you this would not have been possible!
The billboard is located in the westend of the city. Isn't it incredible? Thank you to our very own Sam Whincup for creating this attention grabbing design.
We are able to keep this up for the entire summer and we are told that there will be 14,169,000 views during this time!
June 15th: Mary-Ann Holms is once again interviewed on"Animal Advocates Radio: Voices Carry For Animals" with Debbie Dahmer to provide updates on Lucy. You can listen here
June 24, 2023
Because of the pandemic, there hasn't been a VegFest since 2019. It's back this year and so is LEAP! It was a fun filled day with lots of traffic to our booth. This is by far the easiest place to do advocacy for Lucy with so many like-minded folks attending.
 |  |  |
|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |
October 16-20, 2023
World renowned elephant expert Lek Chailert comes to Edmonton to show her documentary "Elephant Mother" and to host a fundraising dinner for LEAP, as well as to hopefully visit Lucy at the Edmonton Valley Zoo. Lek's visit also brings many other LEAP supporters to Edmonton from all over North America. This also includes members of LEAP's own admin team, who met in person for the first time! These are some photo highlights as well as a video highlighting the entire week our visitors were here in Edmonton.
 |  |  |
|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |