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Air Dates: August 12-18, 2024

It’s easy to think that people and animals are incapable of coexistence. But Ruth Ganesh warns that mindset is dangerous to biodiversity, to the existence of some of planet earth’s most remarkable creatures, and even to humanity.

Ganesh is a creative conservationist and philanthropist with a particular interest in environmental issues. She has spent the last 15 years conceiving and producing large scale public art exhibitions in London, Edinburgh, NYC and Mumbai. Ganesh serves as the co-founder of the CoExistence Collective and principal trustee of Elephant Family, a non-government organization based in the United Kingdom dedicated to protecting Asian elephants from extinction in the wild.  The Great Elephant Migration is a global fundraising project of the CoExistence Collective that aims to to amplify indigenous knowledge and promote shared spaces between wildlife and humans.  The Migration features one hundred life-size elephant sculptures created a community of 200 indigenous artisans in the Nilgiri Hills of South India.  The sculptures are made from lantana camara, an invasive weed that encroaches on wildlife habitat and each one is modeled after a real elephant the artisans live alongside in India.  The elephant herd is currently in Newport, Rhode Island and will continue to visit sites across North America, including Miami Beach, Fla., The Blackfeet Nation in Montana, and Los Angeles, Calif. as they raise money and awareness to better protect migratory animals like the elephants.

On this episode of “Story in the Public Square,” Ganesh describes the importance of the conservation work the Elephant Migration supports.  She said after years working in elephant conservation and working with various tribal groups in Tamil Nadu she realized “there is this spiritual perspective, this beautiful relationship with nature where animals are seen as gods, or they’re seen as people.”  She continued, “they’re seen as your sort of kin, your brother, your sister and, because of that relationship, because you don’t see yourself as above the animals, you’re just equal to them, the idea of an animal being inconvenient and therefore killing it is just not in the psyche, so there’s this wonderful empathy that’s going on at a national scale that I think we can all take a lot of inspiration from.”

“Story in the Public Square” broadcasts each week on public television stations across the United States. In Rhode Island and southeastern New England, the show is broadcast on Rhode Island PBS on Sundays at 11:00 a.m. and is rebroadcast Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. Check your local public television listings for air times near you! An audio version of the program airs Saturdays at 8:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. ET, Sundays at 5:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. and Mondays at 2:30 a.m. ET on SiriusXM’s popular P.O.T.U.S. (Politics of the United States), channel 124. “Story in the Public Square” is a project of the Pell Center at ������. The initiative aims to study, celebrate and tell stories that matter.