But the Zoos Say ...

Zoos, like circuses, are part of the entertainment industry. Zoos know that their increasingly sluggish attendance soars when they can feature babies, particularly baby elephants. In 2000, a week after a baby elephant was born at the Woodland Park Zoo, zoo attendance doubled. After two baby African elephants were born at the Indianapolis Zoo, attendance and membership rose 10 percent and $10 million in gifts from foundations and individuals poured in. More than 10,000 people visited the Pittsburgh Zoo during the weekend that a new baby elephant was first put on display. So, getting babies in means money in the bank for zoos and hence the problem.

The trouble is that elephants breed poorly in zoos and die young. To boost attendance and generate more profits, the San Diego Wild Animal Park and Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa captured and imported 11 wild juvenile African elephants from Swaziland in August 2003 in hopes that they will breed more highly profitable zoo babies. To skirt the obvious issue that no zoo today should be harming animals who belong in the wild, the zoos portrayed the capture as a “rescue.” This is disingenuous at best.

What follows are quotes from sandiegozoo.org defending its reprehensible actions, shown in italics, juxtaposed with the facts from PETA’s research, but first, please read who the players are:

Experts Referenced
Dr. William Keith Lindsay, with a Ph.D. in zoology, is a natural-resource ecologist with nearly 30 years of professional experience in research, management, and conservation with African elephants and their ecosystems. Dr. Lindsay currently manages African field projects for the Environment & Development Group in Oxford, U.K. Dr. Lindsay’s comments are excerpts from his letter warning the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service against issuing an import permit for the Swaziland elephants.

The Amboseli Elephant Research Project has conducted more than 30 years of research on wild elephants inhabiting the Amboseli ecosystem. The eight Amboseli scientists critical of the zoos’ elephant capture are the acknowledged leading experts in the field of African elephants and represent more than 200 years of combined experience in research and conservation activities. The Amboseli scientists’ comments were submitted to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in opposition to allowing the Swaziland elephants to be captured and imported.

Fiction vs. Fact
(Zoo arguments are in italics.)

Swaziland’s Big Game Parks Chief Executive Ted Reilly stated that he does not feel Swaziland’s natural resources can sustain the strains placed on it by a thriving elephant population.

In Swaziland, which is the size of New Jersey, 36 elephants, which was the total number of elephants in Swaziland before 11 were captured and exported to the zoos, certainly does not constitute an overpopulation crisis. In fact, the elephant population in Swaziland has been decreasing, not increasing. Swaziland’s Big Game Parks is one of many areas in Africa that stocked their reserves with orphaned elephants a few years ago and are now complaining that they have too many elephants in hopes that zoos in wealthy countries will buy them. Dr. Lindsay wrote, “The Swaziland authorities are not managing their elephants in [accordance with] the current state of ecological knowledge, or indeed with any clearly thought-out strategy. The arguments put forward for the supply of the elephants to the zoos are entirely insufficient to counterbalance the considerable concerns over the welfare of captive elephants.” Interestingly, as both Swaziland’s CITES management authority and chief executive of the Big Game Parks, Ted Reilly is not only the one who approved the elephant export permit, he is also the one who profited from their sale.

Conservation officials in Swaziland have spent years trying to find a place in Africa where these elephants might be legally moved and where they would be safe from poaching. Unfortunately no such place in Africa [where the elephants could be moved] was discovered.

Most people are shocked to learn that zoos are still capturing animals from the wild for the sole purpose of displaying them in captivity. Mislabeling this capture as a “rescue,” when it was really the purchase of abducted wild elephants, has been crucial to the zoos’ public relations campaign. As the zoos are well aware, three wildlife reserves in Africa were willing and able to provide an alternate home for the Swazi elephants, thus allowing them to remain free in the wild. For example, the Shamwari Reserve in South Africa’s Eastern Cape has 7,500 acres for elephants, was willing to take them, and even applied for the necessary permits to begin the importation. Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique with more than 1 million acres was willing to take them. And the Ngome Game Reserve in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal Province was also willing to take the elephants as part of a burgeoning community-based ecotourism project. Despite the zoos’ and Reilly’s claims, Ngome does not allow hunting. PETA even offered to pay to relocate the elephants to one of these reserves. Unfortunately, the zoos refused to withdraw their bid to buy these elephants, thus blocking efforts to truly rescue them by moving them to other reserves.

It is important that zoological facilities, like the Wild Animal Park, continue to house elephants to ensure their survival for future generations and further conservation, education and research efforts.

Experts, scientists, and researchers who study elephants in their native lands disagree. The Amboseli scientists wrote, “Taking elephants from the wild is not only traumatic for them, it is also detrimental to their health. . . . [W]ith their potentially long lives, their ability to communicate their emotional states with numerous vocalizations and displays, their loyalty and care of each other, their gentleness and dignity, we believe the time has come to consider them as sentient beings and not as so much money on the hoof to be captured and sold and displayed for our own use. We should be beyond the exploitation of animals as complex and magnificent as elephants.” Dr. Lindsay wrote, “It is much better to watch films of real elephants behaving naturally—walking, feeding, playing, mating, fighting—in truly natural social groups of up to hundreds of animals ranging widely across ecosystems than to see miserable captive elephants standing around in a bare enclosure, no matter how ‘naturalistic’ the landscaping design may be.”

Ted Reilly, Swaziland’s Big Game Parks chief executive, wrote in a previous letter to US Fish & Wildlife Service and restated in his declaration to the US District Court for the District of Columbia that these 11 elephants will be killed if not imported to San Diego and Tampa. ... [A] few groups (indicating that they would rather see these individuals dead than in zoos) have attempted to block this move.

This is simply a disgusting spin on a tragic situation brought about by the zoo’s greed. Reilly claimed that the elephants faced death to assist the zoos with their deceptive public relations campaign, with the import process, and with court challenges brought by a coalition of animal protection groups that included PETA. To avoid harming Swaziland’s tourist industry with additional negative publicity, Reilly would certainly have chosen to place them in another park if he knew that no one would pay money for them. Given that zoos offer no decent quality of life to elephants, only loneliness and frustration, not to mention “discipline” and a life of total servitude, letting them go to sleep, never to wake up again would have been infinitely preferable to subjecting them to the fright involved in shipping them overseas to suffer the noise, handling, confinement, vibrations, air pressure drops and other, to them, inexplicably frightening experiences that they are not in the least prepared for, followed by a miserable existence of profound and relentless despair, isolation, inactivity, loss of freedom and the opportunity to make choices, painful and crippling ailments, exposure to deadly diseases, being shuffled to other zoos and circuses, separation from family and friends, beatings, chainings, and premature death. Both the San Diego and Lowry Park zoos have horrible track records with regard to animal care that include beating elephants severely and shipping them to circuses to be beaten even more. The American Zoo and Aquarium Association, which sets zoo industry standards, has woefully inadequate elephant care requirements, allowing accredited zoos to keep 13,000-pound elephants in outdoor enclosures that measure just 40 feet by 45 feet (the size of a three-car garage) and to train them with cruel and barbaric bullhooks.

The Wild Animal Park [has] a 3-acre enclosure that mimics an African savannah.

Dr. Lindsay wrote, “Although such enclosures may be considered large by the standards of zoos, they are tiny compared to ... natural conditions. ... Given that these conditions may be considered ‘good’ within the US zoo community, there is little prospect that elephants can ever be kept in sustainable social groups in zoos.”

The San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park sent three cows to a new, state of the art facility in Chicago.

As PETA feared, San Diego’s female elephants, who were discarded and shipped to Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago in April 2003, are in terrible shape. Fifty-three-year-old Peaches broke a tusk, perhaps in a fit of rage. Tatima is angry and frustrated and shows signs of self-mutilation. Wankie recently suffered an injury and hobbles around the tiny enclosure, unable to walk on her left hind leg. In San Diego, Peaches, Tatima, and Wankie were outdoors year round in the warm climate. In early October 2003, with temperatures in Chicago already dropping to below freezing, the three elephants were observed huddling near the door waiting to go in at 3 p.m. With Chicago’s long, bitter cold winters, they will be caged in a small backroom for half the year, making their chronic medical conditions even worse. Zoos cannot expect to inspire the public to champion the protection of African elephants, a species designated as threatened, when the zoological community itself views these animals as disposable.

The Zoological Society of San Diego and Lowry Park Zoological Society [worked] in concert with the Species Survival Program (SSP) of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA).

In August 2002, the AZA made misleading statements in a letter to the King of Swaziland to convince him not to be concerned about the controversy surrounding the capture. The AZA claimed that the African Elephant Specialist Group (AfESG), a coalition of technical experts that focus on the conservation and management of African elephants in their native lands, had reviewed an AZA article that defended keeping elephants in captivity and had agreed with its findings. The AfESG denied any such endorsement. In a July 29, 2003, letter, Holly Dublin, chair of AfESG, wrote, “Besides misrepresenting the substance of the statement and resolutions referenced ..., the letter contains inaccuracies. ... As is true of all articles published in Pachyderm, the views expressed by authors and contributors do not represent those of IUCN, the SSC or any of the three Specialist Groups responsible for producing the journal.”

The Zoological Society is ... providing Swaziland Big Game Parks with funds.

Dr. Lindsay wrote, “This opens the door for small reserves ... to become production farms for the international zoo market, a gross distortion of the ideal of nature conservation.” The zoos are fueling the international trade in rare and exotic species, which puts endangered animals worldwide in great peril. As expected, this capture has set a devastating precedent. Now the zoo industry, along with circuses and trophy hunters, is attempting to weaken the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) to make it even easier to buy foreign endangered species in order to cage them, make them perform silly tricks, and kill them for trophies. While the 11 elephants were being snatched from their home in Swaziland, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service announced a proposed change to the ESA that would essentially allow zoos, circuses, and big game hunters to simply buy exotic endangered species with the ridiculous claim that the money would be used for conservation efforts. If adopted, as evidenced by the Swaziland elephant capture, there will be no incentive for countries to protect endangered animals when they can make money by selling them.

To prevent [these elephants from being culled], the Zoological Society of San Diego has offered to bring these individuals to the United States.

If the San Diego zoo were truly concerned about animal welfare, it would not be dumping animals by the thousands. According to Animal Underworld: Inside America’s Black Market for Rare and Exotic Species, an investigation into zoos that sell unwanted animals into the exotic animal market, where they end up in deplorable conditions or victims of canned hunts, “[I]n the 1990s alone, … the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Wild Animal Park have relied on [unscrupulous animal dealers] to dispose of well over one thousand animals.” The San Jose Mercury News reported that San Diego Zoo even sold animals to “dealers and brokers convicted of state and federal wildlife charges.”

The North American African elephant population is no longer self-sustaining and has nearly reached a reproductive standstill.

Dr. Linsday wrote, “There is no ‘population’ of elephants in the U.S., just scattered individuals or very small groups kept in near solitary confinement. The genetic diversity of this population is irrelevant as there is so little breeding, or prospect of breeding. This is not a species that has any sustainable future in captivity, as it always seems to rely on imports from the wild, and it is past time that the zoo community accepts this fact.”

Scientists indicate that without new genes from elephants coming directly from Africa, the aging North American population will no longer be able to procreate.

Dr. Lindsay wrote, “Zoos have always had trouble getting elephants to breed, for reasons they appear unable to fathom. Reasons that are given ... include: behavioral problems, age, medical conditions, or inadequate social groupings. It seems very likely that the elephants are generally extremely stressed and unhappy by the confining conditions of captivity. The optimistic view is expressed that ‘new medical information and improved husbandry techniques may correct past breeding and rearing problems.’ These techniques include attempts to achieve breeding through artificial insemination and hormone treatments. This is a ridiculous waste of funds, attempting to slap a technical fix over basic facts of nature. The money zoos spend per individual elephant would be spent MUCH more effectively on in situ conservation.”

Conclusion
Wild elephants are already experiencing enormous pressures from loss of habitat and poaching. By removing more elephants from their homes, zoos are yet another threat against their survival. Between the early 1960s and late 1980s, the captivity industry captured and imported 368 baby African elephants. Forty-three percent of those elephants are already dead. In fact, of the 92 who died just since 1990, 92 percent never even reached the age of 40. In the wild, elephants can live to be 70. Captive elephants have suffered enough. Zoos must begin phasing out their elephant exhibits by ending any future attempts to breed them or capture more elephants from the wild.