Opinion
Courtesy of Friends of Woodland Park Zoo Elephants
Zoo should close Elephant Exhibit to save money
By Alyne Fortgang, co-founder of Friends of Woodland Park Zoo Elephants
Woodland Park Zoo announced it will be closing the Night House exhibit in order to save money. It is reported that the zoo is cutting $700,000 dollars, including 12 full-time jobs, from its $29 million budget.
The most expensive animals to keep on display at a zoo are elephants – close to $400,000.00 a year for the three elephants housed at Woodland Park Zoo.
In addition to being expensive, the postage stamp-sized exhibit is woefully inadequate for the planet’s largest land mammal.
For about seven months of the year, the elephants are locked in a barren barn stall for 16 to 17 hours a day due to climate.
Outdoors, they share less than one acre of yard. Science has conclusively shown that deprivation of space and social contact causes mental and physical suffering in elephants, resulting in their lifespan being shortened by decades.
Woodland Park Zoo and the citizens of Seattle have the opportunity to send our three elephants to the 2,700-acre Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee’s sub-tropical climate.
There they would join 15 other elephants and roam hills, forests and meadows and swim in a 25-acre lake. In other words, act like elephants and heal from the traumas of captivity.
The Elephant Sanctuary has offered to give Chai, Watoto and Bamboo a home for life at no expense to Seattle taxpayers or Woodland Park Zoo.
The change needed to sustain the zoo financially and ethically is to make the unselfish and humane decision to let Chai, Watoto and Bamboo go.
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Comments
Zoo: Be Humane and Save Money
Woodland Park Zoo needs to save money like most businesses these days. The elephants are the most expensive species to maintain . At the same time, the elephants desperately need to be given back their lives - they've been kept in a one-acre exhibit and locked in small rooms in the barn for up to 17 hours a day due to our cold, wet weather. They all exhibit neurotic behavior because this severe confinement has driven them crazy; and they all have captivity-related physical illnesses too caused by lack of space and exercise and standing on hard surfaces for years - arthritis, chronic foot infections and chronic colic. They are likely to start dying off within the next couple of years judging from their medical records.
in addition, why is the zoo continuing to pour money into their deadly elephant breeding program? Elephant calf Hansa has already died from a dreaded elephant virus. The African elephant Watoto is infected with the same virus. Any calf born there will likely die too. The zoo should stop pouring resources into a failed breeding program and take The Elephant Sanctuary up on their offer to transport and care for Bamboo, Watoto and Chai for the rest of their lives where they will have the space and freedom all elephants need to thrive.
The zoo can either close their exhibit or convert it to a humane one that would likely be far more interesting than the current one and would certainly be more cost-effective for the zoo. Sometimes economic hard times provides opportunity - for the zoo it can become a chance to save money and become more progressive at the same time. How about it, Woodland Park Zoo? It's time to move forward.
Nancy Farnam, Director
Sound Animal Rights Alliance (SARA)
Please free them
There is not much more to say than what Nancy has already so gracefully stated. Releasing these creatures will be good for everyone...please enough is enough...they are not meant to live in Seattle under these conditions...we dont have the right to keep them and hold them hostage. There is a place for them to go...this would save their lives and save the zoo money..its a no brainer...give up the control.
Free the Elephants
As Carol Guibault said before me "please enough is enough". Indeed I say let them go! It would save the zoo lots of money, save people's jobs and free the elephants from a life of misery. They'd live happily ever after in that idyllic place at the Tennessee Sanctuary and at no cost for the zoo. How selfish it is to keep them longer in that small WPZ jail. Perhaps the new Seattle Mayor will say: "Do the right thing, LET THEM GO!" It's a win-win situation.
Please release the elephants
I second the comments of the others, we can do better by these elephants by allowing them to live out their lives in the 2700 acre Elephants Sanctuary rather than forcing them to stay at our tiny, cold zoo.
Stop Deadly Elephant Breeding
I agree with Nancy above. Why is Woodland Park Zoo continuing to try and breed elephants if this deadly virus is there? It must be an expensive program and if a baby elephant born there will probably die, why continue it? Stopping this alone might save a few jobs at the zoo. Who the heck is making decisions out there anyway? This doesn't make much sense.
Free the elephants
So I'm just wondering. Elephants are extremely expensive to care for obviously. Who will be paying for their care if they go to the sanctuary? They live a long time, is the funding unlimited? Do they have enough paid and experienced employees and caretakers to look after them 24/7? They say they have room for 100, sounds like animal hoarding to me. My understanding is that several people have been hurt there and one killed already. Who is overseeing the health and safety of their volunteers and employees? Seems they are using an unproven method of elephant training and humans are at risk. Nice in theory, but potentially lethal in the long run, and in turn detrimental to the elephants.
Can the public still visit and see them? Virtual visits can't really provide the impact and sense of wonder and awe that live sensory observation can.
Will they be able to fulfill their natural instinct to breed, produce and raise offspring?
Tennessee? Sub-tropical? Awfully cold there in the winter, snows even.
Providing for elephants is not something to be taken lightly.
Keep the elephants!
Typical animal rights crowd - try to kick the Zoo when it's down. If you really were friends of the elephants, you'd support the Zoo! And do your homework. Several elephants and a keeper have died at this unaccredited ranch in Tennessee over the past three years. Sending elephants halfway across the country to a place that has a spotty record sounds like a bad idea to me.
Zoo Arguments Irrational
i've been supporting the Tennessee Elephant Sanctuary for several years. They have over 80,000 supporters who are inspired by the incredible work they do in providing a "safe haven" for elephants from the self-serving human exploitation they have suffered from in zoos and circuses. The Sanctuary is a place of healing for them. Endowments are established for each elephant to insure they will be able to care for them for life. The Sanctuary is not open to the public because that's what a sanctuary is, a "safe haven" that recongnizes elephants don't exist for us. They exist for their own reasons and don't owe it to us to sacrifice their whole lives just so we can look at them once or twice a year. It's our own selfishness that makes us think they do.
The zoo's breeding program is anything but "natural". They have been artificially inseminating the elephants; And the sanctuary movement does not believe elephants should be bred in captivity. There is no reason to other than that zoos want to have a supply of these animals in
the future because they believe this will keep people coming to pay admission fees at the zoo. And with herpes viruses and incredible birth complications in zoos, most of the babies die before adulthood. Elephants in the wild , on the other hand, don't have any problems reproducing.
Regarding the climate at the sanctuary, they only get a dusting of snow usually in late December or January. Then they start warming up in February. Certainly a lot more elephant-friendly climate than Seattle.
Zoo Employees Again
The "guest" (ie. zoo employee) above who tried to disseminate the usual zoo fabrications about the Elephant Sanctuary is pathetic. The Sanctuary is not an "unaccredited ranch". It was accredited by the Association of Sanctuaries, only one of two places receiving this rigorous accreditation. It is also licensed by the USDA and the TWRA (Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency) which has much higher standards than the zoo industry's inadequate standards. The keeper who died at the sanctuary was killed by an elephant suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) a condition she got from abuse and neglect at an AZA accredited zoo. All but one elephant there died from captvitiy-caused diseases they got from years in zoos and circuses. Like chronic foot disease. I think you zoo folks are the ones who need to do some homework.
Both sides of this argument
Both sides of this argument have their rhetoric: while captivity instead ideal (and being at a sanctuary is captivity, too), there seems to be a bit of "anti-science" running through animal rights rhetoric. Ignoring, or shipping off, a "problem" doesn't solve it. While improvements can certainly be made, much as the knowledge of elephants has come from studies performed in zoo populations. The situation with wild elephants is getting much worse. Zoos are the major contributors, both financially and through personnel, of conservation; animal rights organizations tend to spend time on public campaigns. I applaud the elephant rights' folks hearts, they are in the right place. But the situation is far bigger and the long-term situation of elephants is in the balance. Anyone who cares need to do the homework based on their heads, not just their hearts.
And about the herpes situation, if you don't study it, it just gets worse:
"I don't believe that running away from a problem by stopping the captive breeding program is the way to solve elephant herpesvirus....it is going to become a huge issue in the wild too in the future as the fragmented populations and controlled /captive breeding conditions in range countries in Asia become to resemble more and more the conditions in captivity here. It is better to figure out what is going on here now and learn how to control it and to continue to strengthen/enrich the gene pool in captivity as much as possible." a quote from Gary S. Hayward, Ph.D., Johns Hopkins, 2007
elephants
The science is irrefutable and the zoo industry chooses to ignore facts that have been solidly established: elephants suffer from incarceration. It's that simple. If WPZ were to do what's right for the elephants they would accept the generous offer from The Elephant Sanctuary (elephants.com) and give these 3 long-suffering animals a chance at what is closest to a normal life. If nothing else convinces you, answer this questions: Would these elephants be better off staying on less than one acre, confined 17 hours a day in a barren barn, or on 2,700 acres of varied terrain in a more suitable climate*?
* The Tennessee climate IS sub-tropical as confirmed by NOAH (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
Zoo Herpes Epidemic
It is the zoo folks who are engaging in "anti-science" rhetoric. Woodland Park Zoo has participated in the Asian elephant breeding program for 17 years, and they have no live calves to show for it. Their one calf born in the program, Hansa, died from an elephant herpesviruses. Her death came as a result of exposing her to the African elephant, Watoto, a known source of these deadly viruses. The zoo's own medical records have confirmed that Watoto is infected with the same virus that killed Hansa. Housing her with Watoto violated the zoo industry's own guidelines that have cautioned against housing the two species together since herpesviruses endemic to the African species can "jump" species and have been killing Asian calves under 10. At the Houston Zoo alone, 14 Asian calves have been born and all 14 are now dead, many from herpes viruses. This is because the zoo continued its breeding program regardless of the herpes-infected status of their facility. Woodland Park Zoo has chosen to take the same irresponsible and unethical course, ignoring basic infection control principles, their own industry's statistics, and current science that is all telling them that this deadly program should end.
The zoo industry's Asian elephant breeding program is doing nothing for wild elephant conservation efforts. Almost 3/4 of Asian calves born in zoos over the last 10 years are now dead, over half of those from herpes. Continuing this deadly program is, at this point, only setting up more innocent baby elephants for the same premature and gruesome death that Hansa experienced. An expert elephant veterinarian, Dr, Jennifer Conrad, reviewed WPZ's medical records and advised the zoo to stop its breeding program saying that "the risk of death for the offspring is too great."
"It is clear that an African elephant is a potential source of the herpes viruses that are lethal for Asian elephants. More than half of herpes deaths of Asian elephants have been associated with either direct or indirect contact with an African elephant...Asian and African elephants [should] be managed separately with no direct or indirect contact particularly in herds with breeding programs." Dr. R.J. Montali, elephant herpes expert, 2007.
It should also be remembered that there is no effective treatment for elephant herpes viruses once a calf gets sick. Even receiving the anti-viral medication that is available, 85% still die. That makes prevention imperative to save these calves lives. The zoo has chosen to deliberately set them up for lethal exposure instead which reduces them to the role of expendable specimens in a reckless medical experiment. This is unconscionable and a clear violation of the federal Animal Welfare Act which requires the zoo to "use appropriate [veterinary] methods to control and prevent diseases (Section 2.40(b)(2).
Sounds like you're the one that needs to do your homework
TES IS accredited, as it says right on their website http://www.elephants.com/accreditation.php
As for the elephants and the caretake that died, they were both caused by the long-term stress the elephants suffered in zoos.
I'm sure WPZ cares about the elephants, but three elephants sharing 1 acre in a coldy NW climate just can't match access to 2700 acres, a subtropical climate and the chance to live out their lives as they want. Send the elephants to the sanctuary!
http://elephants.zoo.org/
http://elephants.zoo.org/
Zoo Misinformation and Propaganda
I would say the above link will give you a very good example of the expensive PR propaganda zoos spend their resources on. They disseminate an awful lot of misinformation in this link, including about their breeding program.
Woodland Park Zoo would rather spend its money on expensive PR campaigns and deadly breeding programs instead of acting in the welfare of its elephants and trying to save zoo employees' jobs. Where are their priorities? It's time for our community to ask.
If there is a better place
If there is a better place for our elephants, why wouldn't we want them to go there? It seems that people are either in denial or just don't take the time to learn the facts about how they live in the wild. Would we keep a dolphin in a bathtub, unable to swim anywhere or a kangaroo in a short cage where he can't jump? Elephants need to walk and become ill when they can only stand in one place for hours on end. I have never seen the zoo give an explanation for how this confinement can be justified. I would like to thank people like Alyne for working so hard on behalf of the elephants.
Elephants were meant to be
Elephants were meant to be free -
Woodland Park Zoo, let them go -
Save money - save the elephants.....Easy
Woodland Park needs to come clean
The zoo just won't admit what all the science points to -- elephants suffer and die prematurely in zoos. Urban zoos cannot humanely accommodate elephants. Zoos forsake elephants for zoo-industry careers and the zoo-display business. Woodland Park and other zoos waste hundreds of millions of dollars inhumanely housing a small number of elephants in inadequate conditions and literally divert money that could otherwise go towards TRUE conservation ... protecting tens of thousands of elephants in the wild.
It basically comes down to this:
either you care or you don't ..
1) the science supports that zoos shouldn't have elephants (i.e. psychological and physical problems caused by zoo conditions),
2) it's clearly in elephants' best interests to have free access to thousands of acres (i.e. at the Elephant Sanctuary)
3) zoos' flawed logic: zoos can't justify subjecting a being (i.e. elephant) to conditions that cause suffering (i.e. arthritis, premature death, etc) and at the same time claim that to help animals.
NOTE TO ZOO FOLKS: you can't have it both ways ...
4) waste of money - millions to house a handful of elephants could be used to protect and save thousands in the wild .. duh.
Zoos teach indifference and are counter educational. By displaying animals in conditions that cause boredom, health problems and suffering we teach our children it's OK to do this ...
Free the elephants
Amen and straight to the point Send the poor darling to the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee: http://www.elephants.com/index.php
Or PAWS: http://www.pawsweb.org/about_our_sanctuaries.html
Both places will allow the eleies to have freedom and free of chains and bullhooks.
That is so cruel to keep the elephants confined.
This is certainly not a natural life for them.
About Woodland Park
About Woodland Park Zoo
Deborah Jensen;President, CEO; salary $253,704
(source Charity Navigator)
"Sometimes you fall into traps," says Woodland Park Zoo animal curator Bruce Bohmke, musing on the uproar over a recent beating administered to Seattle's heartthrob, the elephant tyke Hansa. "Habits are hard to break."
On June 22(2002), when the newest keeper in the pen tried to block her mouth, she head-butted him. The first rule of traditional elephant keeping—from ancient India to modern Seattle—is to maintain dominance: When an animal challenges you, use whatever force it takes to get her back in line. According to an internal incident report, the keeper acted by the book and—"reprimanded"—thumped her three times with the bullhook's handle—no physical injury for an elephant, but psychology's another matter.
(Source Seattle News Weekly July 10, 2002)
No physical injury from an axe handle?
I wonder why a beating is not considered assault,
when the victim is a baby elephant?
Hansa was sick, probably from the moment she was born. Her need to eat dirt was most probably a way to try to medicate herself, however futile it
was against herpes.
The zoo breed cute baby elephants for entrance fees knowing full well that they are infected by
the virus carried by Watoto,. the minute they are
born.
I have seen the exhibit and it is pitiful compared to the sprawling Elephant Sanctuary and P.A.W.S.
Both sanctuaries are accredited by the USDA and their respective state animal welfare agencies.
The USDA gave elephants they confiscated from abusive circus owners to The Elephant Sanctuary.
Both places have caretakers on site 24/7/365.
Elephants zoo keepers go home after their shift which, in bullhook management , consist of threatening the elephant to move out of the way, look them in or out, shovel waste, bring some hay, give harsh commands to have the elephants keep one foot lifted at a time so the feet can be checked for abscesses.
Some harsh training is usually added to teach baby elephants that keepers with bullhooks are the boss.
They are isolated from their mothers for sometime and given a taste of the bullhook, the sharp edge. In the wild, a baby elephant is always within physical reach of his/her mother and aunties until they are at least 5 years old.
Elephants who are not babies, suffer from very painful arthritis (made worse by Seattle damp and cold climate) and have to be given massive doses of ibuprofen which give them stomach upset.
If Woodland Park Zoo cared about elephants, they would have switched to protected contact a long time ago. That technique was developed by a zoo to protect keepers and elephants from each other, in zoos all bulls are managed with protected contact. Why are the babies and female still beaten with bullhooks at Woodland Park Zoo?
By giving sanctuary to the elephants and reducing the CEO salary, the zoo could save the 12 low paying jobs it wants to cut to "save money".
Top Heavy Zoo
Woodland Park Zoo is a top heavy facility. The few at the top are paid huge salaries, the rest are paid peanuts and their jobs are in jeopardy so the zoo administration can pursue its pet projects. That would include the deadly elephant breeding program which anyone can see is clearly a failure. But the zoo continues to pour money into it anyway. A previous poster mentioned that any calf born at the zoo will probably die from the same disease that killed Hansa. It doesn't make any sense to continue this program if any calf is just going to die. That's cruel and a waste of money.
The zoo's priorities are really screwed up. Animals don't matter, employees' jobs don't matter. What does matter? The zoo administration making a lot of money and throwing a lot of our money away.