Caring for Elephants Becomes Activist Issue

This July 30, 2009 file photograph, a wild elephant crossing a railway track along Deepor Beel, a wild life sanctuary on the outskirts of Gauhati, India. Wildlife authorities in India have ordered that all elephants living in zoos and circuses be moved to wildlife parks and game sanctuaries where the animals can graze more freely, officials said Friday, Nov. 13, 2009. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath, file)All 140 elephants in 26 zoos and 16 circuses in India will be moved to “elephant camps” run by the government’s forest department and located near protected areas and national parks.

Special facilities will be built for the elephants, raising concerns about putting pressures on already strained natural areas in the way of human encroachment. Research confirms that zoo elephants have shorter life spans and more physical problems like arthritis and obesity than wild elephants. They are also chained up for long periods of the day.

India has an estimated 28,000 wild elephants living in forest reserves and national parks, mainly in the southern and northeastern parts of the country. Another 3,500 elephants live in captivity, many of them in temples, or working in logging camps where they are used to lift timber. No decision has been made about them. via AP

Animal rights activists are also in court in LA, attempting to half construction on plans to house elephants there in a $42 million Pachyderm Forest that’s one of the most advanced inhabitats in America, say zoo officials. Presently, the Los Angeles zoo has one one Asian elephant Billy. via The Daily Breeze

Update on Mon, April 11, 2011 by Anne

The Los Angeles Zoo did open its new Elephants of Asia habitat in December 2010.

On its website, the L.A. Zoo says the new elephant exhibit features a variety of elements that elephants would enjoy in the wild: bathing pools, waterfalls and sand pits. Along with barns to house the big creatures, the habitat amounts to 6 acres. Nearly four of them are open space for elephants to roam.

Trial attorney David Casselman credits the LA Zoo with trying to do something positive for elephants, but his lawsuit continues in appeals court., claiming that the exhibit is elephant abuse.

They’re putting logs out there with holes in them and holes in the waterfall where they stuff food behind, so elephants will stick their trunk in,” says Casselman. “They consider that intellectual stimulation. It’s better than nothing. It gives them something to do. But, you cannot give a child a yo-yo and say your life has been made.