Ben Segal of the PHS Protect The Tusk selling t-shirts at the Global March for Elephants and Rhinos Princeton Rally on October 4. PHS Protect The Tusk raised $838 during the rally that will be donated to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya. Photo credit: Beth Dietz — Ben Segal of the PHS Protect The Tusk selling t-shirts at the Global March for Elephants and Rhinos Princeton Rally on October 4. PHS Protect The Tusk raised $838 during the rally that will be donated to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya.
Photo credit: Beth Dietz.

Students from Princeton High School and Hopewell Valley Central High School organized the 2014 Global March for Elephants and Rhinos Princeton Rally that was held on Hinds Plaza in Princeton Saturday.

More than 100 people attended the rally. People in more than 130 cities worldwide marched in the Global March for Elephants and Rhinos, an advocacy event to raise awareness about the plight of the animals. An elephant is killed for its ivory approximately every 15 minutes. A rhino is slain for its horn every nine hours in Africa. There are fewer than 400,000 elephants and less than 18,000 rhinos left in the wild in Africa.

Speakers at the Princeton rally included Nitin Sekar of Princeton University, David Angwenyi of Hopewell Valley Central High School and Global Connections Kenya, and Ellyn Ito of Seeds To Sew, a non-profit organization dedicated to developing educational and economic opportunities for women and girls in compromised areas in the developing world.

Students rallied for a complete ban on commercial and domestic trade in ivory internationally. mandatory destruction of all ivory stockpiles including confiscated ivory, funding for border force training regarding wildlife crimes and increased port security, stronger laws regarding wildlife crimes, and more resources to combat wildlife crimes.

Ben Segal and Sanjay Kanduri, co-presidents of the Protect The Tusk organization at Princeton High School, started their club last year after their biology teacher gave them a lecture about the crisis. They have sold more than 250 t-shirts, held their school’s first annual spelling bee as a charity event, and host a benefit band called “elephant in the room.” All proceeds from the Global March 2014 are going to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. The students have raised more than $2,000 since they began the club.

For more information about the rally visit the group’s Facebook event page.

Princeton Hopewell Elephant Protest — Mia Mummert, senior at Hopewell Valley High School and president of the Global Connections Kenya club, at the Global March for Elephants and Rhinos Princeton Rally on October 4. Photo credit: Kim Robinson.

Princeton Hopewell Elephants March — Dr. David Angwenyi and students from Hopewell Valley High School at the Global March for Elephants and Rhinos Princeton Rally on October 4. Photo credit: Kim Robinson.