Alastair Mckimm styles Ashleigh Good, Jeneil Williams and Julia Frauche in Ryan McGinley’s spring/summer 2013 Edun campaign.

With a focus on the globe’s desperate need to save elephants from extinction, the Africa-inspired Edun brand has extended the campaign into a limited edition t-shirt collaboration using McGinley’s photography. Proceeds of the t-shirt sales will be donated to WildAid.org.

This weekend’s New York Times published a staggering set of statistics about the slaughter of elephants in Africa.  A staggering 62 percent of elephants vanished from central Africa between 2002 and 2011, according to the largest study ever conducted in the central African forests by about 60 scientists. The elephants are being destroyed to feed the astronomical demand for ivory trinkets in China and the Far East. 

The Op Ed piece makes a passionate statement of protest on behalf of elephants: 

An elephant’s tusks have become bling for consumers who have no idea or simply don’t care that it was obtained by inflicting terror, horrendous pain and death on thinking, feeling, self-aware beings.

Followed by:

Nor do young elephants develop secure social relationships when living in a state of terror, or mourning slain family members — and elephants do mourn. When mothers are killed, babies still dependent on their milk die slowly from starvation, heartbroken and alone. We increasingly see groups of young elephants without knowledgeable females accompanying them. Lost with these matriarchs are traditions and collective memories passed down through many thousands of generations that guide their offspring to that isolated salt lick or patch of fruiting trees that helped to sustain them.