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In February 1987, Liz Claiborne and Art Ortenberg made their first trip to Africa: to Kenya and Tanzania, chaperoned by Jim Murtaugh, then Curator of the Central Park Zoo. Jim introduced them to renowned landscape ecologist David Western, known familiarly as Jonah, then director of Wildlife Conservation International's East Africa program.
The Foundation was formed one night over dinner during their trip, and it has worked closely with Jonah ever since:
- Funding the decisive study of the ivory trade that led to the total trade ban in 1989;
- Purchasing a vital elephant corridor between Tarangiere and Lake Manyara National Parks in Tanzania in 1990;
- Funding pivotal studies of elephant human conflict during Jonah's tenure as director of the Kenya Wildlife Service from 1994 to 1996;
- Supporting his life-long study of elephants at Amboseli National Park; and most recently
- Funding his ambitious effort to re-establish the largest contiguous elephant population in East Africa by reuniting now-fragmented herds in the western borderlands of Kenya and Tanzania.
From the beginning, elephants have been the lynchpin of the Foundation's attachment to wild animals, conserved in the wild.
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