Edinburgh: Jungle City unveiled in Royal Botanic Gardens

Today saw the launch of Jungle City in Edinburgh’s Royal Botanical Gardens. There’s around 130 life sized animals dotted around the gardens, with some special ones on show in Harvey Nichols at St Andrew Square and inside The Dome on George Street.

The Elephant Family exists to save the endangered Asian elephant from extinction in the wild, along with tigers, orang-utans and all the other animals who share their habitat.

The Botanics are free to enter and the Jungle City is situated around the main paths and trees and easy to spot.

For those that want to learn more about the animals, there is an audio guide available and the £4.50 cost to hire the guide goes direct to the charity. One audio guide is fine per family as it is speaker-based and not through headphones.

The sculptures will remain in the Botanical Gardens for the next few weeks and will then be relocated on the streets of Edinburgh on 6th September. They will then regroup for one final gathering at the National Museum of Scotland, before being sold at auction in aid of the preservation of Asian elephants.

•  There are 130 sculptures of mother and baby elephants, tigers, hornbills, crocodiles, orangutans and tigers. All have been creatively decorated by artists and celebrities.

• Fifty of the sculptures can ‘talk’ and feature voiceovers by a number of celebrities including Andrea Corr, Dame Rula Lenska and Geri Halliwell. You will have the opportunity to use the audio guides to listen to the voices.

• The Jungle City concept is the brainchild of Elephant Family founder and conservationist Mark Shand.

• The online auction will go live on 22^nd September – please visit www.jungle-city.org for further details
• The auction will take place 29^th September at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh.

We’ll be bringing you more pictures of our favourites and a full review in due course. When the animals move to the Edinburgh Streets, there will be a map available to track them all down.

Elephant merchandise is available to purchase at the Botanics and Harvey Nichols, with all the profit going direct to the cause.

You can find the Elephant Family and Jungle City on Facebook and follow them on twitter.