Freya Aspinall is dedicated to taking animals from the zoo and putting them back where they belong.
In an Instagram video posted by Freya Aspinall, she sits on the ground outside as an adorable lil’ gorilla climbs onto her lap and hugs her tightly as she kisses its furry lil’ head. It is a magnificent thing to watch as this wild animal cuddles with a human. The video has over 320k likes and counting.
Aspinall posts tons of videos of her interacting with exotic animals that most of us would never have a chance to see outside of a zoo, let alone touch. She currently has over 975k followers on Instagram (@freyaaspinall) and over 790k followers on TikTok (@aspinallfreya). This 20-year-old isn’t an influencer making a grab for views; she is actually doing the work. The snuggly gorilla in the video was one of two that were rescued after their whole family was slaughtered in front of them to sell at a local village. You see, Freya lives and works at the Aspinall Foundation (aspinallfoundation.org/), which was founded in the U.K. by her grandfather in 1984, and she was just recently named as the director of the new U.S. branch. The Aspinall Foundation, along with its sister organization the Howletts Wild Animal Trust, have rescued and rewilded over 2,000 animals. Currently, Aspinall is hand-raising two lion cubs (whose mother passed away in the sanctuary due to a uterus infection), which involves bottle-feeding them every two hours. She is emotionally gearing up to send them back to Africa this year. “Every animal is difficult but you are sending them to where you know they are meant to be, so it’s a weird mix of emotions,” she says. “It’s really sad but it would be much sadder for them to spend their life in a cage.”
Aspinall has been bonding with and then rewilding wild animals her entire life. She was raised interacting with silverback gorillas, and is the only woman in history to have naturally developed a relationship with a silverback gorilla and its family without any taming or training. The Aspinall Foundation is the first organization in the world to have successfully returned a gorilla back to the wild, and it has now successfully rewilded almost 80.
They are currently working on their greatest conservation challenge: returning the first herd of elephants ever back to the wild. It’s a challenge Aspinall is determined to win. “Humans have stolen over 2,000 elephants from Africa for zoos but not even one elephant has been returned back to Africa,” she says. “We are currently trying to send back 13 elephants. We think we’re getting close to it but these things are very, very hard to pull off. But it can be done and it will be done.”
Why aren’t more organizations doing this important work? Aspinall breaks down two main reasons why reintroducing captive animals to the wild is not common: “It’s a lot of hard work. It deals with governments from around the world, third world countries, permits…” She explains another reason boils down to money. “People aren’t doing it because they are in business,” Aspinall says. “They are in conservation for business and we are in business for conservation. The zoo industry is a billion-dollar business and it effectively puts themselves out of business if they are sending their animals back to the wild.” With the Aspinall sanctuaries, the money that the parks make goes to rewilding the animals.
Though rewilding the elephants is a huge undertaking, Aspinall’s work doesn’t stop with the large exotic animals. “Sometimes my dad will sit with me and he’ll tell me about the animals he’s sending back and it will be an animal I have never heard of, like a rare exotic squirrel, and I’m like, ‘Why are you sending a squirrel back to the wild?’” she says. “And he says, ‘You can’t just care about the big and famous animals. You have to care about the small animals too.’”
You can follow her and the animals’ journeys on her socials and @TheAspinallFoundation on YouTube. Want to help out? Head on over to their site or angelink.com (the first crowdfunding platform powered by women) to donate.
Image Credits:FREYA IN MOTORCYCLE TEE, PHOTO COURTESY OF BOB FOSTER; FREYA AND GORILLA, PHOTO COURTESY OF HUGO COMTE
