Thank you, Mr. Siebert, for such an excellent expose. Really well-done. I was one of many three years ago who railed against this tragedy on Facebook. We were mocked and vilified as we tried to dispute the fairy tale that the elephants were being rescued. It was all a sham, as you have now told the world. I want to shout "We told you so!" But I just feel renewed anger and sadness. My heart aches for these elephants and all elephants and all animals held in captivity. What must they be thinking when they think of home and wonder what's going on? Zoos should be illegal.
5
Very sad. Elephants must not be treated like a product, an object, sold and shipped. No one should benefit from their misery and cruel treatment.
6
Captivity isn't half as torturous as being machine-gunned by .50 caliber bullets at point-blank range, then having your tusks hacked off with a metal-cutting saw as you're dying. Zoos, for all their flaws, will soon be the only place anyone will be able to see elephants (and rhinos, tigers, lions, orangutans...). Perhaps future visitors to those institutions will take the opportunity to muse upon the unspeakable depravity and endless cruelty the human race inflicts upon the creatures with whom we share this planet we are relentlessly destroying.
But I doubt it.
2
It's this kind of information that makes me feel strongly that humans face a reckoning, whether from the hand of God or from nature itself.
2
too many humans....
7
Excellent elephant conservation programs, well worth supporting with your charitable contributions, are not hard to find. I recommend the World Wildlife Fund and The Big Life Foundation.
3
I don't know what it's like to be an elephant, but whether in the wild or in captivity they seem to be beasts of burden, carrying their own enormous weight against the force of gravity. To be born an elephant is in itself a cruelty from my perspective. I'd rather be a much smaller creature like a squirrel than an elephant.
1
@Steven They are actually graceful and move silently.
2
So let me get this straight: The wicked zoos cannot meet the emotional needs of elephants. Humans in their native lands are unlikely out of the goodness of their hearts to make available the large expanses of land needed to do so. I guess it's some consolation that the last elephant will be seen by a rich guy in a jumbo jet spewing carbon from here to Africa.
1
The UN projects that the population of Africa will increase by over 90% in the next 30 years. Unless the issue of population growth is addressed, the future of wildlife on the African continent is very bleak.
9
I recommend "Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel" by Carl Safina. Please read and share. Warm but also heartbreaking essay on the struggle of highly social creatures, including elephants, for the very survival of their species now. Humans are everywhere, and their numbers threaten everything. Besides destroying the habitat, they bring their guns with which they can take down the largest and healthiest animals, wreaking havoc on the established social order of these amazing creatures.
5
Call it what you will but it is kidnapping and imprisonment, often the cruelest kind, solitary confinement. Zoos are prisons, nothing else. Close them all. Support the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee instead.
7
A trophy hunter Ron Thomson, who claims to have killed more than 5,000 elephants and 50 hippos says he has no regrets, and is ‘10,000 times’ unrepentant.
The UN estimates that the population of Africa will increase by over 90% in the next 30 years. When it comes to wildlife preservation on the African continent, population growth is the problem that needs to be addressed above all else.
1
As opposed to what... wandering around and being shot for their tusks? Please. Really.
@marrtyy I would rather be shot dead at home than drugged, put in a cage, shipped who knows where to spend my life in another cage and maybe periodically have to be again, drugged, and shipped to a new location.
5
"Despite mounting evidence that elephants find captivity torturous" has got to be the stupidest statement by a human in a long time. Ask the polar bear who swam in circles in the heat of Central Park in the summertime. Go to the Bronx Zoo and see the inhumane prisoning of "wild" animals and the freak humans gawking at them. I saw kids chasing a peacock. Sick.
2
Yes, it's an imperfect world of seven billion human beings and counting. Yes, it would be ideal if elephants could thrive in their native habitats. Yes, it'd be great if everyone could afford the African safaris taken by those who want to see zoos abolished. Yes, zoos that claim to do elephant conservation need to step up their game beyond giving a paltry $112 to the vital programs of the "96 Elephants" of this world. But for many of the folks who've spent hours watching the thriving African elephant herd of babies, adolescents and adults - fruits of the 2003 import - at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park and elephant herds in other accredited zoos with best practice policies, this is as good as it gets for now. In the hometowns of their youth, that's how some of today's greatest wildlife biologists got started. I'd rather see that continue than to hear folks yell and scream in vain about how the world should be more perfect.
9
If the zoos want to help elephants they should pay for anti-poaching squads.... and $50 for every poacher's scalp.
3
Honestly, anyone who uses PETA as their main source is toyally discredited.
2
I have not been to a zoo since I was in my 20's; it was the San Diego Zoo. The caretaker of the elephants allowed me to step in during their "bath" and i fed one of the little guys. I was so ashamed after that. The little pachyderm pulled me closer to him with his trunk. He made little noises and the suction from the trunk was really strong. I have not been to a zoo since and I never will again. It is just too sad.
6
We put animals and people into cages and tell each other that it’s a humane thing to do for blah blah reasons. Land of the ‘free’ and home of the brave? I hate zoos, prisons and border camps. Let’s rise up against all such prisons.
5
Why should we expect zoo management to be more "humane" than other kinds of management? We don't humanity as the primary principle in human medical management. It would be miraculous if it were the primary principle in zoo management. Unfortunately, this article isn't surprising at all. If we, collectively want a change, we'll have to change laws and regulations to force the change. Don't bet the rent money on it happening quickly.
Elephants need larger groups to thrive. The tendency of zoos to import mainly females is due to the high rate of polygyny in elephants. But polygyny (in elephants) only works when females can choose among males. There's no short-cut. They need to increase population sizes generally, and not skew them.
Wild elephants, and Asian work elephants, rely on "aunties" to help new mothers raise calves. It's key. Because zoos import younger elephants, they don't have enough older elephants to have a cohort of "aunties."
The PETA led opposition restricts the number of elephants imported.
Attributing human consciousness to elephants, which this article comes close to doing, misconstrues things. They are not huge people in thick coats. Brain to body size ratios: 1.88; humans: 7.44. People often point to elephant brains being bigger than human: it's the ratio that matters. Corvid birds can pass the same tests elephants and whales can, with a brain a thousandth their size.
1
This is a good informative article, but Mr. Siebert flies off the rails with his mystical reveries about the elephant's connection to the earth or quotes somebody who pretends to know the motives of one. Just like every other animal, elephants are adapted to their natural environment, and that's all. My feet instinctively feel out the path to the coffeepot every morning, but I don't get all weepy about it. It's just about fulfilling a basic need. This is a major weakness of those who advocate for better treatment of animals; they're better off sticking to the facts instead of sounding like people who have seen too many Disney movies.
No elephant should be held in captivity.
Heads of zoos with elephants in them, in the U.S. or anywhere else, are indeed “delusional” for not acknowledging the cruelty of keeping elephants in captivity, and they ought to be “pariah-ized” by their informed peers.
China, the world leader in the ivory trade, should be loudly rebuked by the international community for not putting their ivory traffickers in prison for life.
Every huge habitat of elephants should be protected from logging and poaching (1) through monies from safe eco-tourism and philanthropy, and (2) via constant journalistic exposés, through all social media that reach worldwide audiences, that publicly shame, “pariah-ize,” and make it financially suicidal to do business with any link in any of the chains that enable poaching, the ivory trade, logging, or keeping elephants in zoos.
9
So tragic and sad. Look a how much we torment and deprive them. And for what?
6
Zimbabwe currently has 36 young wild caught elephants in the holding pens at Hwange National Park awaiting export to Chinese ‘parks’ and circuses. These brutally cruel exports continue under the pretext of ‘population control’ and raising ‘funds for conservation’, when neither of these are backed by scientific evidence or substantiated by evidence on the ground. Nor can the authorities provide the essential evidence required that proves that these exports are ‘non-detrimental’ to the species. How can they possibly provide this guarantee, when the consequences are so blatantly
obvious in their devastating and well documented effects, to not only the captured young animals, but on those herds traumatised by the entire brutal capture process. In truth these exports smack of nothing more than Zimbabwe’s elite and powerful politicians once again looting the national
heritage for their own benefits.
But whatever the pretexted or real reasons behind these captures, the most glaring and heartbreaking aspect of them is their inhumanity. The entire process is cruel in the extreme on every level – from the chaos of their separation from their families, to the hellish lives that these gentle,
intelligent beings are sentenced to in zoos and circuses.
7
No elephant should be held in captivity.
Heads of zoos with elephants in them, in the U.S. or anywhere else, are indeed “delusional” (as stated in this article) for not acknowledging the cruelty of keeping elephants in captivity, and they ought to be “pariah-ized” by their informed peers.
China, the world leader in the ivory trade, should be loudly rebuked by the international community for not putting their ivory traffickers in prison for life.
Every huge habitat of elephants should be protected from logging and poaching (1) through monies from safe eco-tourism and philanthropy, and (2) via constant journalistic exposés, through all social media that reach worldwide audiences, that publicly shame, “pariah-ize,” and make it financially suicidal to do business with any link in any of the chains that enable poaching, the ivory trade, logging, or keeping elephants in zoos.
8
I’m just curious what the all the “zoos are prisons” commenters would propose as a solution for the current environmental and mass extinction crisis happening all over the world. If it weren’t for zoos, many species would already be extinct. That is an objective, empirical fact (Ca condor, Am bison, black-footed ferret). Can someone explain to me how shutting down zoos ‘saves’ animals from poaching, sprawl, deforestation, and climate change?
Zoos employ some of the smartest, most dedicated biologists in the world. Many of them rarely set foot in actual zoos. The cherry-picked financial data about how ‘little’ money these 3 b-list zoos donate to field conservation only holds up until you google some of the A-list zoos: the San Diego Zoo alone spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year on ex situ work. Ditto for WCS/Bronx Zoo, and Monterrey Bay Aquarium. Those numbers are publicly available on nonprofit financial disclosure forms, though it wouldn’t have supported the author’s premise about the evil zoo-industrial complex (does nobody else think it's weird that the main quoted sources for the article are PETA and...lawyers)?
I’m also getting a lot of liberal neo-colonial vibes from the article and comments. The implication is that we (Americans, keyboard warriors) know better than you (Africans, actual scientists) about how to care for your animals. And bragging about seeing elephants on safari doesn't make you a conservationist - it makes you a consumer.
7
@Alex Animal populations are plummeting, thanks to habitat loss and poaching caused by human greed and human overpopulation.
While I have no suggestions for controlling greed, I do know that empowering women and providing access to birth control is the ONLY way for a population to pull itself out of poverty -- especially the kind of poverty that forces people to move onto land inhabited by elephants for thousands of years.
To keep their crops from being trampled, the newly arrived humans slaughter the offending animals, selling off their body parts for trinkets and useless folk medicine "cures".
Zoos are not the answer to preserving a species. Even a clean, well-run and "humane" (by human standards) prison is still a prison.
3
Profoundly researched and sensitively written piece, although difficult to read (through tears). I will never understand this subspecies of humans that live amongst us on this planet who rape, torture, maim, kill, and disregard life. Oh, that the earth shall disinherit their kind.
7
"disrupt" is a very dirty word, in all its modern applications.....can't we just leave animals alone in their own environment ?
The mistreatment of elephants by humans is a disgrace of monumental proportion.
6
@Robert " Hard Bob " Beaufort - we could do that but it would mean curbing our own breeding AND curbing the obscene consumption of earth's resources. So in two ways expecting homo sapiens to slightly inconvenience themselves. It will not happen. Sadly it won't ever happen. The occasional asteroids that send us back to the stone age are probably the only way to stop the plague of humanity as these have in the past.
2
Thank you for a wonderful article. I am a long-time supporter of The Elephant Sanctuary and have followed the progress of several of the elephants there over the years. The only zoo environment that I think has worked in the Wild Animal Park, which is part of the San Diego Zoo. The Park keep their elephants in an open environment where the elephants are members of a herd. The Park is, perhaps, a bit small compared to the Elephant Sanctuary but the elephants have a good quality of life.
Unfortunately, elephant cannot be well protected in the wild in Africa due to rampant poaching and hunters, like Donald Trump Jr, who kill elephants for trophies.
9
Thank you for the disheartening but very informative article. I love animals, and have always liked going to zoos to see and learn more about them. A number of years ago, we were visiting the National Zoo and came to the orangutan enclosure. We made eye contact, and I will never forget the the sad feeling that came over me. As much as we want to see amazing animals up close, they should be roaming free in their natural environment. Birds, bears, elephants, dolphins, whatever. But we are seduced by the narrative that a few captive animals is furthering research for all, when this article clearly shows that is not really the case.
9
A heartrending and important article. I, too, have seen elephants and other magnificent animals in the wild--in Botswana. Although better than in my youth, Zoos are not an acceptable place for any creatures and should be abolished. It is disheartening to learn how Zoos contribute to the destruction of elephants and other animals while pretending to do the opposite. CITES is unfortunately a joke; it has too many loopholes and enforcement is essentially non-existent as the manipulation by exploiters like Tod Reilly demonstrates. One Reilly observation is correct, however. That is: there are too many people on this planet.
6
Bands of humans hunting and gathering also ranged over large areas, walking for tens of miles each day and often with vigorous exercise.
Yet it doesn't seem to worry us to spend days in a relatively confined space. How do we know elephants find 5 acres confining?
3
We know because of their behavior in captivity, including infanticide, rarely if ever observed in the wild.
2
It grieves me to think that in 2019 so many humans still think its ok to rule other animals lives. And that they do so via lies. Taking an animal out of its natural surroundings rather than do something to stop human encroachment on the animals territory is inhumane. Bear in mind many zoos allow a female giraffe to reproduce, and if its a male baby, that male is then killed. Google the topic!
Here is where it gets REAL uncomfortable. Today thousands of male chicks will be put thru a grinder at chicken hatcheries since males wont grow up to lay eggs. Today thousands of cows, pigs, chickens will be killed for human consumption. Not a need but a selfish human want!! Something two books Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals by Hal Herzog and Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism by Melanie Joy PhD discuss.
11
"...five and a half sprawling acres of tree-dotted mock savanna and a 550,000 gallon pond..."
I am typing this comment looking over my property that comprises 1.67 acres. I believe I have a pretty good idea what it is like to live in 5 1/2 tree-dotted acres. I suspect my swimming pool, and the pools of my neighbors within "our" 5 1/2 acre enclosure get pretty close to the Wichita zoo's pond volume. Proper space for EIGHT elephants? Hardly. A pack of eight German short-haired pointers or Golden retrievers would find that space proper.
I am not a member of any animal rights organizations. I haven't set foot in a zoo in over forty years. But all my instincts agree with the theory that infanticide, not observed in nature, occurs because these animals do not want to subject their young to this hideous lack of space zoo's provide. Hiding celery sticks on the other side of a fence does not solve the problem.
11
Sadly there are no winners here, only losers. Having lived on and off in Africa for seven years, I have yet to find a country that "works" on the whole continent. To think that any country there truly cares for the sanctity of their animals is laughable. Animals are hunted like, animals. Elephants are killed for their tusks, and the countries with the most big game are run by leaders who for the most part enrich their own pockets. Animals? They are last of the food chain for most governments. There is no fairy tale ending.
8
How insane is that we're culling elephants because of their effect on their surroundings, acting as if it's a conservation measure, when we, as humans, continue to breed and spread out like a cancerous tumor. There is no stopping our destruction of the natural world.
8
This is ethical journalism: researched, informative, (and sensitively written--which this subject requires). Because of Siebert's heart-based, intelligent focus, I understand why, as a 1st grader taken to the San Antonio zoo, I froze when we got to the elephants.
Humans have an incredibly deep dark side. Sadly, it can move from once-in-a-while individual outbursts (in an otherwise sane person) to a national policy. Causes and conditions come together: darkly-ruled people band together & at least, covertly, abuse others (especially women, people of color, the disabled, the poor) as well as elephants, dogs...Of course, we'd cage border children and treat them as an unwanted 'other' --Darkness requires othering. (Are we shaping these kids into abusive parents/spouses, even domestic terrorists?) PS: Yes, immigration desperately requires attention. But no wise, humane solution is being offered.
We also have a light-filled side. All of us have it. But these days, it's dimmed by daily bombardment of horrific reports of human cruelty, justifications, arousing tweets, chest-beating.
Daily, we witness a cheap boxing match. The owners consider profit & power as the 'fighters' abuse each other. Many of us (myself included) hide our face, clap or tsk-tsk --yet don't leave our seats. We're over due to stand up to abuse, whether it's for intelligent, aware elephants, for other humans, for animals everywhere, for the forests,water, air. If we don't, who will?
8
My majestic pachyderms! I wish I could explain the profound and deep connection and love, pure unadulterated love I feel for these mammals. It even outpaces my passion for dogs and dolphins and all my other animal adorations. There is something so transcendental about these ancient beings, something so inexplicably, unutterably magnificent and worthy of our respect and love.
African elephant habitat has declined by over 50% since 1979, while Asian elephants are now restricted to just 15% of their original range. It is an eternal sword in my soul’s heart to know these sentient and deeply sensitive animals have endured so much horror at the hands of “human beings” - the most detestable creature on Earth, the ones that kill for sport and pleasure, not survival, the ones who poison and destroy every beautiful thing in the world out of avarice and greed.
Sadly, the beast man will continue to hunt and maim and destroy the communities of my dear pachyderms. I don’t visit zoos. I don’t go to aquariums where we also torture the sea mammals we are killing off with sonar and plastics.
I wish I were large enough, a true giant, to stand between men and them. To protect them. And like some mythical being, I would dwell among them in peace and harmony, and avoid the murderous animal that is the human animal. How the word “humane” ever came to exist is beyond me. It should have animalane. There is nothing kind, noble, nor balanced about the majority of our destructive human species.
11
Humans have been torturing animals since humans emerged from the cave. Elephants are brilliant. Zoos are prisons with fancy architecture and sickening plantings... Animals read faces... and feelings. They are in solitary confinement observed by us. They hate confinement. How we would feel in the same circumstance is the question to ask. Do unto others... as we would have them do unto us. Humans are wrecking Planet Earth in the name of progress. We have a lot of thinking to do... and our leadership is ethically, morally, and financially bankrupt.
9
Thank you for this insight and unbiased view of both sides of the story. This is why I read the paper - to learn and be informed of important issues that are important to me. I was really saddened by this as it seems so obvious that zoos are no place for elephants ...I would rather see them go extinct naturally than face lives in captivity...this is simply wrong.
4
For as long as I've been conscious, I have grieved the cruel disregard humans inflict upon other earthlings. It has turned me off of religions, and most other human-conceived ideologies. I realize we are inhabitants of a food chain planet, and that, in and of itself, creates a bit of a conundrum. However, our use and misuse of all other life forms on this planet, clearly done as though human life is all that matters, results in so much suffering of the others. We are not in any harmony with our shared living beings, and we continue to multiply our numbers to the detriment of all others. We are already too many, and from the bees to the elephants and all in between, we have wrecked havoc upon them all. The suffering of the elephants for zoos in America and China is a crime against them, it is just not deemed that in our legalese world. Legal doesn't mean right, never has. African governments take the money, like most, they succumb to the buck. The wild life pays the price, a life of misery, and a separation of the family bond they have every right to thrive in. It is sick. It is reprehensible.
249
@Marilyn Thank you for such an insightful and well-articulated response. I could not have worded my own response as well so I will leave my response to this article depicting the sad state of affairs for these wonderful creatures as "ditto" to Marilyn's comment.
9
@Marilyn
I'm not sure what this has to do with religions. However, it's always been painful to visit zoos. Elephants are meant to be in herds, traveling together for miles. And we do this to them?
3
@Daisy22 You're "...not sure what this has to do with religions"?
May I present the following biblical texts, specifically Genesis 1:28 - "God said unto them ...replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."
And Psalms 8:6 - "Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all [things] under his feet..."
As the elephant population in Africa has dwindled significantly over the past 50 years thanks to man's savage greed, I'd say humans have done a criminally bad job asserting their "dominion" over these sentinent, intelligent creatures.
10
My whole life, I have never understood zoos. Of course some are better than others, but even when I was little, watching caged animals turned my stomach. To seem them bored and pacing was disturbing. I am against caging all animals. I wouldn't want to live my life in a cage, so why would they?
Let's do everything we can to preserve their native habitats. To those that can't survive in the wild (such as former lab animals) let's release them to sanctuaries (like Born Free) to live out the rest of their lives.
225
@Suzanna idk zoos - but i do know Aquariums. and the monterey bay aquarium is the absolute leader in how to properly - care for the wildlife + educate the public about them and the oceans + promoting sustainable fishing, etc. Thats what zoos should do. kind of like stations of the cross + stained glass windows, if you catch my drift - people who cant travel $$$ to the Holy Land can still learn and experience
12
@Suzanna I will second that emotion. We should be ashamed of zoos, but we're not. How quaint.
8
@Suzanna
But some animals do well in zoos. And some do not. Any generalization to the contrary based upon human beings is not scientific nor humane. But for their captivity in zoos some animals would be extinct.
With 5% of humanity America has 25% of the world's prisoners. And despite only 13% of Americans being black like Ben Carson about 40% of the prisoners are black. Because blacks are persecuted for acting like white people do without any criminal justice consequences.
3
Thank you for this beautifully written, heartbreakingly sensitive piece. As someone who has been up close and personal with elephants on four Kenya safaris since 2011, I went to the NC Zoo in the fall of 2017 to see how the six African elephants were faring there. A friend and I spent all day at the elephant exhibit. Most of the six were wild-caught as calves after the culling destruction of their families in Zimbabwe in the 80s. There are two males. One is Cesar, blind and elderly before his time. The other is Artie, who was four years old when he was captured and shipped as cargo to North America, perhaps old enough to have distant memories of both his wild life and his incredible trauma. Artie was occupied in the morning in his 3-acre habitat by bales of hay thrown out for him and his two female habitat-mates. (The other three live across a divide.) But after the hay was gone, he spent the afternoon hours standing by a back gate to the barn continually swaying his head from side to side. He only stopped swaying a few times in order to make his way up a path nearer the females, where he resumed the swaying. It was very sad to watch, and many observant visitors at the exhibit noticed and expressed concern. As a male elephant of about 40, Artie would be in his prime at home in Africa, walking miles a day, hanging out with other bachelors, and looking for ladies. All of this has been stolen from him. No zoo can be adequate for the well-being of elephants.
261
Exactly right, Ann. That back-and-forth motion is precisely what horses confined without adequate exercise, making them bored and anxious, often do. It’s called “weaving”; I saw film of the Toronto Zoo elephants doing exactly the same thing before they were sent to sanctuary. Having seen elephants living their rightful wild lives in their native habitat, viewing them in the sterile zoo environment fills me with despair. Protecting them where they live is the only humane response to our human predation of the wild world.
62
@ann erly "As a male elephant of about 40, Artie would be in his prime at home in Africa, walking miles a day, hanging out with other bachelors, and looking for ladies. All of this has been stolen from him. No zoo can be adequate for the well-being of elephants."
Oh my! That brought years to my eyes.
I remember the sad, sad exhibits at the Bronx Zoo some 45 plus years ago.
A lone male lion in a small cage with what looked like a frozen hamburger patty lying on the ground that he was rightfully ignoring.
A padlocked elephant, standing on concrete picking up peanuts of the ground...
5
@Ann Early
As a male elephant of about 40, Artie would probably have been machined gunned down for his tusks, as would the ladies you mention, leaving their poor helpless babies to starve or be preyed upon by lions and other predators that seek baby elephants, if he wasn't shot by furious farmers for wrecking their crops and consigning them and their family to starvation or disaster that year, or for threatening or killing the farmers when they tried to discourage the elephants from crop destruction. And the elephants are driven to crop raiding in part because their habitat has become increasingly constrained and less able to support them, especially as traditional migration pathways are blocked with development. Or worse, culled because he was in an area where elephant populations, despite all these attacks on them, have grown too large for their support. About 10 or 15 years ago, I no longer remember precisely when, there was a huge drought and enormous numbers of elephants succumbed to lack of water and food. The pictures of their desiccated corpses were heart rending.
You are right that no zoo can be adequate for the well being of elephants. Unfortunately, in this day and age, Africa, India and Southeast Asia are no longer adequate for the well being of elephants due to human overpopulation pressures on more and more wilderness areas and rampant, uncontrolled poaching, mafias armed with military weapons and helicopters machine gunning them down from the sky.
3
Having been fortunate to have gone on 2 Kenyan safaris and also having visited the sheldrick elephant orphanage in Nairobi, I realized I could never visit a zoo again. Elephants in the wild were our favorite creature on both safaris. We saw large herds where a boisterous teen was given a time out by his mom, infants learning to use their trunk for the first time, which is really tough bc the trunk contains many many muscles, moms protecting their babies, and watching them eat by swiping the small acacia trees with their feet and then twisting their tusks to pull by the root. They are amazingly social and fun. The ones I have seen in zoos eat hay and look sad. This article made me ache.
282
@Pamela Lamberson
After seeing elephants in the wild in South Africa, I can second this.
My two local Chicago area zoos Lincoln Park and Brookfield have embarrassed and shamed me in their mistreatment of their elephants.
23
@Pamela Lamberson I agree with you completely. Of course, it's not just elephants. I don't see the point of making money this way, and yet it is an industry, so apparently we can't stop it, because.... money, the stuff we print out of thin air. How does that make any kind of sense?
31
@Pamela Lamberson In fact most people don't have the resources to go on safari, and zoos are the only way they can experience what you describe. Some of these comments are really elitist. Romanticizing animals makes one feel good but its unrealistic.
7
During my lifetime, the population of Africa has increased from 200 million to 1.2 billion. This six-food increase has meant less room for wild animals. An elephant that travels in a herd and needs miles to roam will not have any natural habitats as the African population continues to spiral. Zoos may be their only hope if the African populations swells another six-fold in the next 70 years.
6
I can not comment on the specifics of the African elephant but can comment on Thailand's elephants and the change in how they are cared for. Once upon a time you could see an elephant in Bangkok and it wasn't a pretty sight. Today there are quite a few refuges where the elephants roam freely over vaste expanses of park land. There are refuges where they are medically cared for. This change was spearheaded by conservationists passionate about their plight. They are in their natural habitat which sadly can not be duplicated in zoos, no matter how careful they are planned. It is time we realized that the fate of all animals including us is tied together. If we don't take care of the environment and all its creatures we will be doomed as well. For example if we don't stop the use of pesticides and we kill off the bees, we will be killing ourselves as the food supply will be diminished. The elephants are a wakeup call. Are we listening?
7
We need to “reforest” the earth to help reduce our carbon problem. Reforest, provide more space for the elephants and rhinos, and less space for humans. Humans know how to control their population growth (and ignore the Catholic Church).
10
So humans will continue to expand until we've taken over every square inch of the Earth, leaving nothing for wildlife. Who is the "superior" being, I wonder.
63
@Jeri
IT ISN'T LIKELY THAT A PROBLEM THAT HAS EXISTED FOR A LONG TIME CONCERNING THE CRUELTY TO ANIMALS WILL BE SOLVED WHEN YOU CONSIDER HOW WE TREAT ONE ANOTHER. THERE HAS TO BE AN AWAKENING OF A FEELING FOR ALL FORMS OF LIFE ON THE PLANET. THE ANIMAL SIDE OF HUMANITY HAS NOT EVOLVED.
9
@Jeri You are absolutely correct.
4
We are clearly.
1
No. I strongly believe that all animals should have the right to live freely. I don't understand why humans keep other animals trapped in cages for exhibits. Recently, I went to the Washington D.C. Zoo, where I saw a big gorilla with it's hands pressed on the glass in front of him. It's facial expression was nothing but sadness,and his eyes were filled with hope as it stared at everyone watching it through the other side of the window. What really caught my attention was that everyone was on their phone taking pictures and videos for Instagram and other social media apps. I feel the same way about elephants and any other animal that is not in its natural habitat. This includes us. We are animals. How come we aren't trapped in cages for admiration? Elephants don't trap us in cages, so why should we trap them? They are beautiful to look at so close up, but I think we should agree that Elephants are prettier in their natural environments. Elephants could be trapped a fake habitat for the rest of their lives. Imagine getting in jail for walking near cops. It's the same for Elephants. This poor Elephant is minding it's own business, when someone traps it, or a photographer starts snapping pictures of it.
16
I'd exchange all of the elephants on Washington for all the elephants in the wild any day of the week.
8
This is perhaps the worst researched story I have ever read in the lauded NYT. The author is simply wrong in most of his assertions and the fact is that the elephants are far better off in these cases than they would have been otherwise. The vast majority of experts in the field would agree with my assessment. The author completely ignored arguments that did not make his point. Shame on you NYT.
7
@JCP No. This is a thoroughly researched, deeply informed essay. Real experts (not the marketers and pro-spectating folks at the zoo) know that this article finally shares true research and chisels away at the circus/zoo/human-centric mentality. Researchers and experts are the source of information here! Trying to invent that there is ANY argument left is absurd and willful blindness. Imagine if zoos actually told the truth about why their captive far-roaming animals are pacing, rocking, ruining their feet on the hard-pack surfaces? It would actually BE educational for all the children that essentially must hop on the train of rationalizing - ignoring what they know and pretending to have fun at another living being's expense. Anyone with an ounce of brain can see what is going on: they are prisoners for our pleasure. A bad idea made normal...
14
@Colleen
Yes, Colleen speaks truth to power through her art, bringing the sight of the madness out of the zoos into unexpected places. Watching her projections is a giant slap to wake-up. You are not being distracted by your kids dragging you off to see the next animal. You stand and contemplate and really see the neurosis before you. We must stop.
http://www.colleenplumb.com/thirtytimesaminute/index.htm
4
I’m curious as to how you came to your conclusion that this article is poorly researched & that elephants are far better off in zoos than in the wild. Are you an elephant expert? If so, please provide your credentials. And also, share with us the names of the “experts” that you assert concur with your conclusion.
13
To all the zoo haters who own a [service] dog. Domesticated or not, you are removing that dog from the pack and keeping it locked up all day -- whether it sleeps with you in bed or joins you in the shower -- Put everything perspective - you are harboring a captive animal- just like a zoo.
5
@Aaron A bit of a false argument. Capturing and transporting a wild animal half way across the world to put on display to help sell tickets for entertainment & profit is not the equivalent of a responsible pet owner rescuing a dog from their local shelter.
15
@Aaron False equivalence by an elephantine margin. Dogs have been domesticated for thousands of years. Elephants, not at all. So, keeping a dog as a pet or service animal is nothing like capturing a wild animal and removing it from its habitat and family group.
14
"Neuroimaging has shown that elephants possess in their cerebral cortex the same elements of neural wiring we long thought exclusive to us, including spindle and pyramidal neurons, associated with higher cognitive functions like self-recognition, social awareness and language ... One of the more disturbing manifestations of zoo-elephant psychosis is the high incidence of stillbirths and reproductive disorders among pregnant mothers [also true of tigers and I am sure of other beings]..." Very strange, that one would continue to keep beings in captivity, having complete knowledge of these realities.
9
@Maria Kristofer
Spindle neurons are found not just in elephants but also in other species with large brains, like primates and whales as well as raccoons. Their occurrence in these species implicates them in higher thought processes, but there's no direct evidence to prove that connection.
Pyramidal neurons are found in the cortex and hippocampus every mammal that I can think of, including rats and mice. I'd be amazed if it turned out that any mammal didn't have them. They aren't uniquely associated with higher cognitive functions. (I'm a neuroscientist, by the way.)
2
Culling wildlife, how about culling the cancer of this planet, humans? What is needed is a pandemic, I support the anti vaxxers in their ignorance to help one along.
As a 64 year old man that consciously made the decision to not have children when I’m gone that’s it for my bloodline. No one that has more than one child can call themselves a environmentalist, having children is the absolutely most damaging thing you can do to this planet.
Meanwhile I had a argument with a neighbor about her 10 year old riding a four wheeler illegally on the streets. She said it was the only place he could use it. I got a blank stare when I asked why she bought it for him in the first place.
5
It seems to me that elephants in zoos are equivalent to humans sentenced to life in prison without having committed a crime. The whole notion of zoos is archaic. They are just morbid little microcosms of mans domination over every living, breathing creature on the earth. I hope to see their demise in my lifetime.
16
Making money off of the backs of other living beings is lazy and cruel.
Stop visiting zoos.
Support animal welfare organizations.
13
20 years ago I had the privilege of observing elephants in Botswana. I was struck and always will be at their stunning familial culture and their innate dignity. It is so despicable to separate them from their families to go to a zoo. It's a kidnaping. After my safari I never set foot in a zoo again, feel they are repellent prisons.
14
Zoos - those things with walls and cages - should be shut down.
I won't visit them.
I hope you won't, too.
10
Years ago, a friend gave me the novel The White Bone, by Barbara Gowdy, told from the perspective of a young African elephant named Mud, whose tribe was attacked and slaughtered by poachers. An extraordinarily beautiful story, which I have not yet been able to get through because it's so painful to read. But I highly recommend ~
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/barbara-gowdy/the-white-bone/
4
Zoos are for entertainment, a place where people can let their elementary school age kids run to around and bang on the plexiglass barriers screeching.
How many zoo breeding programs release the larger mammals onto the native wild? *crickets*
Omaha need elephants like a bird needs teats. So happy my local, midwest located zoo finally got rid of theirs. An environment that has African like weather 3 months out of the year does not need elephants.
Zoos are family entertainment, that con people they are doing good works. They need to be shut down.
11
C.I.T.E.S. is consistently rendered as "Cites" in this article. It is an acronym for "Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora." Why is it represented typographically like that?
7
If we want more elephants, we fewer humans. Fundamentally, human overpopulation is what destroys the environment.
10
@Thomas T
The problem is, while that certainly true, we have no business telling those people how they have to deal with the enviroment, not only did we damage the natural development in most Aftrican states quite heavily, we still do, e.g. by selling them seeds that are genetically manipulated so that the crops don't produce germinable seeds, so they will always be dependend on western companies.
How can we dare to expect them to treat aminals better if we treat those humans in a despicable way ?
2
@Thomas T
Amen.
2
I've got news for you .. most all animals hate captivity. Unless they are rescued from circuses, zoo's, bad private captivity, or being injured, it basically drives them crazy. The ones that are rescued and do go the big 2500 acre sanctuaries seem happy.
12
Zoos are prisons for all animals, especially elephants.
6
We are all trapped in cages....I know I am. I wake up and work most of my day so I can eat and have a place to sleep so that I can stay alive so that I can work more so I have food and a place to sleep. Life is a cage.
Elephants in the wild die all the time. Elephants in custody die all the time. Humans die all the time. Rats die all the time. The world is a cage, and human society is a cage.
Compassion is a salve, but not a cure. Freedom is a lie and never existed for anyone in all of history. Freedom is an illusion that we have hope to achieve but never can.
Should we keep elephants in zoo's? If we dont, who loses out? I know one group that will lose out is poor people. Ecotourism is for the rich, the poor have zoo's. Without zoos, only the children of the rich will get to see the bountiful world that is nature. They will sit in their concrete cages and never see the world beyond them because the rich believe that elephants should only be accessible to the rich. Does that matter? Does seeing an elephant add anything to anyone's life? I'm sure it does. However, is it worth the suffering of a wild animal? That's a moral question we all have to answer.
10
@Jacqueline
Your “all beings are caged” paradigm offers itself to analogy:
Free human with freedom of choice and opportunity IS TO human imprisoned in cell block with no choice
AS
Elephant living with its herd on savannah or forest IS TO
Elephant living alone in a zoo.
I imagine the inmate sweating his days away in Angola prison (or wherever) would trade your cage for theirs any day. I imagine zoo elephants feel the same about their plight.
6
@Jacqueline Try spending one week in a prison cell and you'll see the difference between your existential "we are all trapped in cages" and what real imprisonment is like. The elephants are closer to experiencing the latter. And you are simply experiencing a failure to take control of your own life.
12
I had visited Swaziland shortly before they started claiming they were "overrun" with elephants. Nothing is further from the truth. This is all about greed and I thank the NY Times for this in depth reporting.
14
I will never go to a zoo again. I will tell others to boycott them as well. Why the heck do we even have zoos since it is so cruel to animals. Maybe if people stopped going to them, they'd start closing them. I don't think most people realize how sad and depressed the animals are there. Maybe it's something that should be taught to kids in school.
10
I'm not sure when it exactly happened but I have realized that I've gone off people. Perhaps it was the latest Planet Earth series by David Attenborough that did it, but I have almost developed a void in my mind where my fellow humans used to be, and now animals of all sorts occupy that place. Don't blame me or judge me, I didn't have any control over it.
We humans have systematically decimated wildlife just by existing and procreating with reckless abandon. With the human population careening towards ten billion in just couple more decades, wildlife is already doomed, and so consequently are we. Each living organism apart from humans is incredibly important in the complex ecosystem that used to run this planet and we are losing multiple species rapidly.
The plants will rule, and I predict in a few thousand years they will help create another assortment of animal species to help them spread their seeds and spores all over a desolate human-less earth, just like in Chernobyl
Donate to the WWF. It's not going to save the animals, but may save our souls...
11
@Shahbaby There are also other organizations working to help wild elephants. My favorite is the Elephant Crisis Fund which is a funding mechanism that puts 100% of donated money into the field. It's partially housed at the Wildlife Conservation Network.
7
@Shahbaby
The World Wildlife Fund does some good work but not in proportion to the resources it has. The comment by iz is right. Donate to smaller charities doing the heavy lifting under difficult conditions and without much financial support.
4
@Shahbaby I recognize your experience of recognizing that the large organism/biological entity at the surface of "Earth" has a devastating homo sapiens infection.
5
It might be good for the rhinos, but it isn't good for the elephants.
When I was in Zimbabwe looking at large herds of beautiful, graceful, elephants roaming free, we were told of the overpopulation of elephants and the damage and destruction they had done to the environment and how it was affecting the ecosystem and other wildlife. It was also affecting the elephants because there was not enough land to support all those elephants. We were also told that culling part of the herd is not the answer because even the youngest elephant in the herd will remember the culling and will become a danger.
Too many elephants. We talked about solutions and there just did not seem to be an answer.
The same story was heard in several other countries.
I don't know what the answer is, but elephants need a lot more room than what zoos can provide.
@esp You were lied to by a nation that has long coveted trophy hunting and the blood-drenched ivory trade. Elephants have been decimated. That Zimbabwe nickles and dimes its wildlife to death is a sorry fact and tourists are on the receiving end of that propaganda so that they're fine with trophy hunts and trips to zoos.
1
@esp Zimbabwe currently has 36 young wild caught elephants in the holding pens at Hwange National Park awaiting export to Chinese ‘parks’ and circuses. These brutally cruel exports continue under the pretext of ‘population control’ and raising ‘funds for conservation’, when neither of these are backed by scientific evidence or substantiated by evidence on the ground. Nor can our authorities provide the essential evidence required that proves that these exports are ‘non-detrimental’ to the species. How can they possibly provide this guarantee, when the consequences are so blatantly obvious in their devastating and well documented effects, to not only the captured young animals, but on those herds traumatised by the entire brutal capture process. In truth these exports smack of nothing more than Zimbabwe’s elite and powerful politicians once again looting our national heritage for their own benefits.
But whatever the pretexted or real reasons behind these captures, the most glaring and heartbreaking aspect of them is their inhumanity. The entire process is cruel in the extreme on every level – from the chaos of their separation from their families, to the hellish lives that these gentle, intelligent beings are sentenced to in zoos and circuses, and yet seem unable to stop this torture. If population control is indeed a factor, as it may be, then surely the most HUMANE options need to be implemented, and not the greed motivated money grabbing ones?
1
@esp - every instance of the word 'elephants' just substitute 'humans' and you'll see what the HUGE problem truly is. (You already know I know.)
Having produced some documentaries on the illegal wildlife trade I have come across dozens of infractions of the CITES rules and regulations;
However trading a CITES I listed species, which can not be done on a commercial basis, with the reasoning:
'I didn't sell the elephants. I donated them in return for a charitable donation", takes the cake.
The real issue is that the the CITES secretariat and Standing Committee with the relevant enforcement tools do not seem to be insulted by these kind shenanigans.
5
Are being shot and having their tusk torn off?
Then the short answer has to be yes.
1
There is no excuse for confining sentient animals to prison captivity for profit. None. Nothing else really needs to be said.
10
This is such a crime and a tragedy that we have elephants in captivity.
We, humans are so selfish. We want to be entertained, and have them in gated locations such as a Zoological Garden. That is not where the elephants belong. They should all go back to their original places of habitat.
9
For all those who feel that zoos are evil, and should all be shut down, tell that to the Tasmanian tiger who went extinct or the California condor who was saved. The difference... zoos.
7
Complex problem, the Homeless. Simple solution, the Zoos. First we need to close all the Zoos and relocate all those animals to their natural habitats so that they can be in peace instead of institutionalized. Then we begin to rehab all the Zoos for human habitation, such as plumping, electricity, TVs, etc. and then invite the homeless to move in. Their responsibilities would be maintenance and entertaining TV crews that would frequent something that they called 21st century lifestyle of the Flintstones. After all we see enough animals on TV and I'm sure they have spent enough time looking at us.
4
Zoos are so awful. And we humans are so incredibly selfish that we must have whatever we want. We are more than willing to delude ourselves that we're "saving" them, and we're giving them a place to live that doesn't even remotely resemble their native habitat. Disgusting.
1
Well a lot of people in Africa kill them, so the zoos can be life savers.
1
All zoos should be closed and their animals put back into nature.
2
@Karl - only after all homosapiens are spayed and neutered and their credit cards cut into slivers. (No breeding and no consumption.)
let the elephants go.
4
Why would any creature relish lifelong captivity? This is not a natural design.
1
I can’t even bear to read this article. It’s like a history of slavery.
9
“They don’t breed, or if they do the mothers often turn around and kill the baby. They engage in behavior that is completely unknown in the wild. And I think it’s because they know on the most fundamental level inside themselves that it’s not a life for them. It’s certainly not a life for their babies.”
Though not the focus of the article, I can’t think of a stronger example or confirmation of Nature’s appointment and blessing of the female of the planet’s species, especially Homo sapien given recent theocratic laws, as the sole and best arbiter of whether or not a pregnancy should continue. “Life” is not so “precious” that it demands elephants be caged and forced to reproduce or allows for human males to force human females to continue pregnancies that they neither want nor see as appropriate to continue if the conditions of living are suboptimal.
Pro-choice isn’t just liberal politics, it’s coded into the DNA of every living female on the planet. Only males seem to be driven to reproduce wildly and with abandon, with no thought or care for the conditions of living that offspring may have to endure. For too long, we’ve allowed and enabled human males to rampage like adolescent bulls across the planet, slaughtering species into extinction, destroying whole ecosystems, and enslaving women into unnatural and downright vile reproductive servitude, all so they can enjoy an all too brief frisson of uncontested power. When will we all rise up and stop them?
18
@left coast finch
Beautifully stated.
3
@left coast finch
Thanks for your comment, I agree 100%.
4
Zoos should be illegal. They are miserable places where instead of protecting the animal's natural habitats, "experts" enslave the animals for the enjoyment of humans. A zoo is a business, nothing more.
1
Thank you for reporting on this critical story. I have long thought that keeping animals in cages so people could gawk at them is obscene.
8
I so appreciate this article!
Finally, people are realizing what a scam these "rescues" are. I've been an animal advocate for twenty five years, and with public consciousness turning against captive wild animals, these charlatans have changed their tactics to get their hands on elephants and other wild animals.
They get their "rescue" elephant(s) but please look for the elephant hook standing idly in the corner. I assure you it is there, til the crowds go home. Then the controlling and training starts and never stops until the elephant gets in his space. Next morning it starts all over again. Elephants cannot endure confinement but it is still happening for profit.
I know there are legit elephant rescues where they are free to roam but they are few and far between.
Google how unscrupulous people control elephants.
Be prepared to get hopping mad.
11
Michelle Pardo is a team leader in the litigation practice at Duane Morris.
Shun her.
2
I think it depends on us by not visiting Zoos and stop this horrible business. Animals suffer as we do. I haven't been in any for more than 15 years, don't support animal captivity of any kind.
6
Zoos are completely backwards. What can possibly be learned from keeping an animal in captivity. In fact zoos are the opposite of educational; they are morally, ethically, and spiritually degrading.
What gives us the right to see these animals up close?
Until we learn to respect the other animals with whom we share this planet we will continue to be a degrading force.
10
How can we expect any animal to be satisfied with captivity? Just the word itself is claustrophobic.
4
This is the kind of thing that annoys me. There are zoos and there are AZA accredited zoos. AZA zoos do not get animals from the wild unless the animal is injured or would die otherwise. Elephants can live long happy lives in human care with the right AZA accredited tools, space and so on. Stop trying to muddy the waters. Lazy and inaccurate.
7
@MP Wrong! The Dallas Zoo is AZA accredited and so is Sedgwick Zoo, both recipients of the elephants stolen from Swaziland for U.S. zoos. Truth is, governments who subject elephants to trophy hunts and/or sales to zoos always say they're overpopulated and would "die otherwise." It's all bunk as these ivory-trade loving nations are keen on exploiting elephants as commodities until they no longer exist.
6
I am for anything that preserves animals at ANY cost. God knows elephants and legions of other animals are being decimated in their natural habitats because of poaching, climate change, habitat destruction, etc. Hey, I'm not happy where I live and work either...but I deal. Don't mean to sound heartless...but personally they all need to be saved and zoos may be the last hope for many species!!!
4
The fact that a highly intelligent being would kill its offspring instead of subjugating it to a life of imprisonment should be telling enough.
Yet here we are, importing these animals under the guise of conservation when we all know it is more about financial profit from all parties involved.
So many people, (not only Americans, but people around the world), still spending money to view animals in captivity is deeply disturbing.
13
I cannot find one useful thought in this piece other than that hidden away in this pieces belabored version of the Agent Smith rant in the Matrix about humans.
And I will wager that no one who reads this will know more about elephants than when they started. To the contrary.
They will know that animal rights activists and attorneys are on the case. Wow. The Times today. In on it.
3
@In deed
Sorry, but I learned a great deal from this article. Three stand outs; how sensitive the elephants foot pads are and how the Elephants have ritualize the burial process. I also was not aware of the amount of territory an elephant covers each day.
Over years I have learned to love and respect the elephant community. This article by Mr Siebert just gave
me addition reenforcement of my feelings as well as deep concern for their safety and well being.
Not sure why it is necessary to be snarky toward the NYT;
do you think that everyone is as all knowing as you?
8
@Leslie
Good. Learning is good.
Fewer words more learning.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant
@Leslie
Elephants do NOT bury their dead. There is evidence that they do mourn their dead, but not that they bury them.
2
If you can afford it, go to a humane sanctuary like the Elephant Nature Park in Chang Mai, Thailand, or on a safari...and you will see first hand, the elephants happily going about their lives and they were intended to live.
Large social mammals were not meant for captivity, its not just the imprisonment and cruel mistreatment, but the lonliness and longing for their herd and homelands.
3
Every time you hear the word, "zoo" think instead of the word "prison". Everytime someone tells you they are going to the zoo, correct them, tell them they are going to visit the animals at the prison. Let's change the meaning of the word zoo. Change the context. Change the opinions of the paying public, reduce attendance, reduce the revenue, close the prisons.
8
I refer to situations of this kind (zoos) as the "human superiority complex".
Just because we have thumbs and analytical brains, we think we're superior to other species. Wrong.
6
Unless radical action is taken and people physically defend the rights of animals (particularly ones like the elephants who are on the verge of extinction) ON the ground in their natural habitat then it's over. And then let's think about how the same thing is happening to humans down the road. When you destroy the land and a person/animal's culture survival becomes unrealistic. The ecosystem is dying EVERYWHERE.
5
This article was difficult to read particularly in light of what we know about pachyderms. These zoos operate under the guise of conservation but the reality is they are exploiting elephants for profit. Calves nurse from their mothers for up to two years and sometimes longer yet two year old calves are being ripped away from their mothers and family herds and airlifted to the U.S. It's disgusting.
14
I have a childhood memory of seeing lions in cages in the Bronx Zoo when I was a child. Even then I knew it was wrong to keep majestic animals in such captivity. I've hated zoos ever since.
9
The reality is ... Animals love zoos-- It's like a day spa .. no competition for food, no predators, plenty of water. It's humans who think animals are held captive.
So everyone hug your service dog and calm down!
3
@Aaron
I'm curious, did you even read the article?
2
@Aaron I really hope you were being sarcastic here. If you were separated from all your friends and family and forced to spend your entire life within the confines of a day spa how much would you be enjoying life after the first few days?
2
I wonder how beneficial zoos are to animal conservation. I mean the kids who go to them. Do they turn into compassionate adults who are likely to support the animals in the wild and not? I say this because I’m afraid of what would happen if we got rid of them as we know them. Then I think of Trump Jr and how he paid a large sum to hunt and kill elephants and lions and even a rhino perhaps. Surely he had gone to a real zoo when he was a child and thus my hypothesis may be nonsense. I think breeding and holding wild animals in captivity for the sake of a zoos existence is a practice that needs to end. Sanctuaries and breeding to preserve a species is something else.
4
@Bill
Post like this make me sad. I know you mean well. But:
There is no legal definition of a sanctuary. You can, and people do, put a tiger in a dog cage in your back yard and call it a tiger sanctuary.
AZA accredited zoos have strict guidelines on animal husbandry, care conservation, how much space and even how and when animals are fed with the focus strictly on the animals. AZAs like the Central Park, queens zoo and so on have strict guidelines about animal husbandry, enrichment and so on. AZAs also take great care in breeding and do not just take animals from the wild for no reason.
5
@MP Accredited, legitimate sanctuaries don't breed animals, and they don't sell them for trophy hunting ranches. Both the Dallas Zoo and Sedgwick Zoo are AZA accredited and they received elephants from Swaziland. There was no reason to buy the elephants other than a collection of zoos dealt with a corrupt government that justified that the sale saved them -- a bogus claim because elephants can and should be protected in Africa if morality matters. They've been successfully translocated to protected areas where they have been been wiped out.
1
Every time I visit a zoo, I get turned off by the gawking masses expecting anthropomorphic behavior from some poor creature imprisoned in a space that's a tiny fraction of their natural habitat.
One of the few "zoos" I ever visited where I didn't feel sad about the lack of space for the captives was the Montreal Insectarium.
5
Thank you for writing this wonderful, informative article. Thanks, NYT for publishing it.
“Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment or abuse in any other way.”
PETA
4
Zoos do serve a purpose or several purposes: study, save from extinction do to unrestricted hunting for sport, medical treatment that can better an entire herd/species, and the list goes on. On the flip side, no matter how well staffed and how much space they have, I find it cruel; not as cruel as staging dog fights or bear fights (Russia?) but cruel none the less. Sort of like stealing someones children because that someone thinks they can do a better job of raising them.Pretty selfish and evil.
If trophy hunting was banned (except for the culling of out of control herds relative to the food supply) and poachers were put out of business, I would say eliminate zoos.
1
@old sarge
Please look up what AZA accredited zoos mean and do. Most of the megafauna in the wild today like bison and elephants would not be there were it not for AZA zoos. The Bronx Zoo in particular has staff all over Africa and Asia putting their lives on the line to protect wild elephants with their lives. Every year many die fighting poachers. WCS does more to protect wild elephants, expand their range and work with governments to punish poachers than almost any other organization on earth. The Bronx Zoo is why there are any wild bison at all. And even today they are breeding genetically pure bison with no domestic DNA in them for the sole reason of returning them to the wild. That’s what AZA accreditation means. I know you likely won’t. But if you can take a behind the scenes tour of an AZA accredited zoo do. The work they do and the care they take is remarkable. What people think zoos are and what AZAs actually are is like the difference between Trump University and Harvard.
8
@MP As we've indicated above, the elephants landed in two AZA accredited zoos.
There are no domestic elephants, they are all wildlife, and except for scientific study should live their lives in the wild. Yes I understand overpopulation, if that is the case, cull. All wildlife dies a violent painful death usually via starvation or being eaten alives, a bullet is much more humane and none of the meat goes to waste in a protein deficient country.
Maybe the people that advocate keeping elephants in zoos should spend a good portion of their lives in a habitat at the zoo designed for humans. Of course, we'll accommodate them with nice large cages and an acre or two to roam about, simulating the real world.
7
Whenever these issues arise, I'm torn. I grew up in Cincinnati with a great zoo tradition and it formed much of my interest in nature today. I have been to many zoos all over America, and still find them mildly interesting...but I also find them sad and barbaric. But I am not a kid anymore and It's just not the same.
But on this issue, and likely many others regarding captive wildlife, I don't see why we need a zoo and an elephant in every medium to major sized city in America.
I think children should experience the best things about a zoo and be spared the bad zoos and bad captive animal displays. To do that, we need to "cull" our zoo's down to a top 50, one in each state, and put the resources necessary into those singular entities.
Children can travel and anticipate that rarer experience and parents can expect a top notch experience in their zoo destination trip.
Caging a wild elephant so the bulk of America's population can drive 60 minutes or less to see one, is to equate animals to fast food chains...more "convenient" is not better.
3
@Mark Renfrow My local animal prison sells itself as family entertainment/education center.
If little Kayla and Konner can't see an elephant or lion pacing in a circle, is their life incomplete? See some poor soul looking uncomfortable in our 90F midwest heat.
It's all about kid golden moments to post on social media.
2
The keeping elephants and other large animals in zoos or amusement parks disgusts me so thoroughly. To read that they are still being flown over from Africa is heartbreaking.
7
Many people don't seem to understand that any creature, humans included, would rather endure he risks inherent in the natural world, than to be provided all the food they want in a "safe" environment like a zoo. I am a big proponent of reducing the human population by providing free birth control all over the world so that the other lifeforms we share this planet with have a fighting chance. I don't want to live in a world that has no other lifeforms and I don't believe the human race can survive without them.
9
Zoos are a cruel 19th-century form of entertainment no matter their claims of scientific pursuits.
Small and large cities all over the world have zoos where animals endure terrible life-long suffering on display in small enclosures. What if we shut down our zoos and work to end the horror of animals in captivity as amusement.
This should be the measure of our humanity and the shame of those who would perpetuate such cruelty.
1
I can only hope that this article makes the general public appalled at the exploitation of these magnificent creatures by organizations claiming to protect them. Congress needs to enact a ban on the importation of wild elephants and to put pressure on China to take effective steps to prevent the importation of ivory to satisfy the decorative desires of their nouveau riche.
1
Anything held in captivity may be legal, but like slavery, is morally reprehensible when it is solely for the benefit of a select few humans, and this case for entertainment and supposed education value.
When can zoos finally go extinct?
6
The reality is that elephants in the wild are being destroyed by hunters and poachers throughout Africa in nations unable or unwilling to protect them. So the future is grim with zoos the last redoubt. Throughout recorded history humans have destroyed the larger animals. What is remarkable is that so many elephants survive to day. No other large land mammal has such numbers.
Those privileged to live and visit African game parks come away with profound respect for these awesome highly intelligent large creatures. So what to do ? Petition the UN and major governments to prohibit the importation of Ivory Tusks. China is the major problem here and its government is largely indifferent.
Other than zoos elephants have no long term future unless selected African nations respond to western sensitivities. I urge all to go on Safari and see these splendid creatures and others before they are lost forever.
4
There are people from billionaires to rock stars to farmers who own vast tracts of land they don't need or have no family to leave the property to upon their decease. Couldn't a gentle, not hateful campaign be mounted to persuade those people to donate the land for animal sanctuaries, and establish trusts to support it? Or public funds could be found to support the donation.
1
Humans are often awful. Sometimes they mean to be, and most of the time they don’t. To the recipient, it is a distinction without a difference.
1
Thank you. Wonderful article. You’ve educated us all.
1
My mother used to walk us all 5 children plus some neighborhood kids to Roger Williams Zoo in Providence, Rhode Island. The first animal we would look at was Alice the Elephant. She would sway back and forth. Even then it didn’t seem quite right. Her being caged as she was.
3
Zoos I’m sorry to say are horrible places. I will never set foot in another one again. I know they mean well but the animals who call it home deserve much better.
1
Prior to invention of television, the only way one could see an exotic wild animal was at a circus or zoo. Those days are long past with hi-def video we can see almost every animal on the planet in its own environment. I see zoo animals in cages much like Sea World's whales and seal lions–a small closed unnatural habitat. So used to being fed by humans they could not survive in the wild.
God help us for what we have done to these creatures and others like them. There aren't words strong enough in English or any human language for the atrocities we humans have committed against our fellow mammals and fellow animals generally. How can we possibly explain ourselves to future generations who will without any doubt realize the full extent of our actions?
5
Can we talk about gorillas too? The last time I went to a zoo (a few years ago because i was caring for a toddler), I went into the gorilla house. I looked at their eyes looking back at me. I'll not enter a gorilla house again. These are highly intelligent creatures being kept in captivity or in another word, jail. There has to be a better way.
11
When I was very young, the Central Park Zoo in Manhattan had an elephant in a small caged area. She paced back and forth and back and forth all day from the back wall to the front bars. There was a dispenser with peanuts and for a dime or a quarter, so children could feed peanuts to the elephant. I was about 6 or 7.
It was was so sad and painful to watch, it made me want to cry. I could see and feel how unhappy she was and how trapped. It also made a lasting impression on me about how cruel humans can be. I think back now at what those who put that poor animal in that cage we’re thinking. What did they think children would see? Would feel?
Thank you for this article. Amongst many important issues, it highlights that cages come in many forms; so does cruelty, especially the kind that hides behind the mask of “doing good.”
8
I was on a Kenyan photo safari about 12 years ago. We saw elephants in several places. One interesting tableau: A mother and a newborn or very new elephant were crossing a river with an adolescent , good sized sister not far behind. The youngster was absolutely delighted by the experience of the water, splashing, rolling, capering about. His huge mother stood over him as crocodiles were a risk to the baby. She was patient but got tired of waiting for him to finish up and cross the water so she could go eat. She turned to the sister and it was so clear somehow that that she communicated : " I'm going up there to eat. You watch him now ." The sister took her place enclosing the happy baby in a safe cage of big legs. Life in a zoo is clearly dull, monotonous and constrained. I read that the Tulsa zoo has a very successful breeding male who has fathered many around the country. It is terrible to know that they die young here. But I think zoos do conservation work and that staff has a conscience and a heart.
What an amazing, beautiful, yet heart breaking story. This is yet another example of humans playing God, we are hurting another species, just as we are damaging our own environment. Why can’t we learn to live in harmony with nature. I pray that some day humans evolve to the point of being one with nature and our environment. In the meantime, as other readers have suggested, it is up to us to take action, lobby with zoos, and lobby with other governmental agencies. This is a world wide problem and needs a global solution. Kudos to the animal rights activists for their selfless efforts and to the author and NYT for bringing this issue to the readers.
3
Some zoos are better than others, but overall, zoos are sad.
It's sad to look at caged animals.
Anyone who has experienced and watched monkeys in the wild, jumping freely from tree to tree, knows the difference.
We humans need to be more sensitive and compassionate to all our fellow living creatures and to Mother Earth.
The right thing to do is to preserve their habitats and stop multiplying the human kind and the plundering.
9
Watching the families of elephants protecting their babies when another family tries to take them is amazing. The mother aunts and sisters group together and charge into rescue the baby. The friendships rekindled when coincidentally being brought together on a reserve where they end up living together for the rest of their lives. The shows on tv do fine if you can’t get to their reserve or homelands.
5
There are, as this piece suggests, both good reasons and bad for placing elephants in captivity (albeit there are no good reasons whatsoever for doing so at circuses or at roadside exhibitions where these animals are conspicuously ill-treated). On the other hand, I'm a bit taken aback by zoo administrators who claim to be so sympathetic towards pachyderms as to shut down their elephant exhibits but who decline to shut down the zoos themselves. Even allowing for the amount of space that this particular species requires, why is it any more humane to hold other intelligent species in captivity- e.g. big cats, bears, rhinos, bison, porpoises, hippopotamuses? And, most especially, what are we to make of the hundreds of great apes and other primates on exhibit in America's zoos? Do man's closest relatives in the animal world deserve any less respect and sensitivity than do the largest of mammals?
16
I’m lucky enough to see wild elephants in Kenya and Uganda where I work. Watching a family heard together is awe inspiring. Elephants are truly magnificent, magical creatures.They do not belong in captivity. Neither do Orcas or dolphins.
We must preserve their habitats to ensure their survival. Zoos don’t save elephants.
31
I worked at a zoo in the development department. It is a cut throat business, aware of the threats and is planning a Disneyland like experience for visitors, their 25 year plan. People blindly donate thinking they are helping animals when they are supporting a business that buys, sells amd breeds them, often with little regard for their mental or physical well being.
Shutting down an exhibit would never happen so they just continue to let animals suffer in exhibits that are proven to cause injury.
26
This is a hauntingly sad story, beautifully written. As a native Detroiter, I am proud of Ron Kagen and the Detroit Zoo for leading the way on this issue. I remember celebrating that our zoo was disbanding the elephant exhibit, and sending our two elephants to a sanctuary. It was the right thing to do. If people want their zoos to do likewise, call, e-mail and write your zoos and demand they do so. Boycott if necessary. You have to get the administration’s attention that you do not want to see elephants in captivity.
62
@HomeInThe313 Kagan is a hero and took a lot of heat for that selfless act.
I would love to see the gorillas go next.
5
@HomeInThe313 That's really lovely. Here's hoping they do the same with the rest of the animals and shut down the zoo completely.
5
Sadly, this reminds me of the rhino at the LA Zoo, who has a pen about the size of a one-car garage and spends its day standing still and resting its horn on a metal rail. It's time for the animals to range free as nature intended and people to travel long distances to see them.
46
@Sara There isn't much nature left in rhino country for rhinos to "range free". Human populations are exploding and will soon overwhelm Africa, where numbers will quadruple by 2100. I've been fortunate to visit Africa several times, but travelling long distances to see what little remains exacts a toll on the environment as well.
3
Investigative journalism at its finest. May the world learn and may the elephants benefit. Thank you Mr. Siebert and NYT.
47
How about some of the American billionaires, who have more money than they can ever spend, channel some of their excess to conservation efforts in Africa and elsewhere? The money could provide is an economic incentive in those countries to maintain habitat for elephants and other animals, our fellow inhabitants on this badly damaged planet. Even if the billionaires donated just the money they got from the Trump tax breaks it could make a huge difference.
32
Thank you for this story. It made me cry. We have two elephants in our local zoo and they look very depressed. Though not as depressed as the two orangutans, who are heart-breaking to look at. Their exquisite eyes seem to beg us, the voyeuristic crowd, to acknowledge the cruelty of their imprisonment. Recently, after years of living together, the two orangutans had to be separated because they started hurting each other. Heartbreaking to think that their imprisonment might be causing a kind of mental and emotional breakdown and turning these lifelong friends against each other.
83
Thank you so very much for this article. I thank the Bronx Zoo under WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) for doing the right thing. Most importantly, the public must become more aware of the sufferings of animals. Some are so much more like us than we know.
37
Thank you, thank you for this piece. Grateful to have this knowledge. I learned so much, and your analogy with whales will particularly stay with me.
22
Separating the elephants was very cruel. Why not send the herd to an elephant sanctuary where they can stay together and have plenty of room to roam? Probably not enough of a "charitable donation."
The great and sad irony here is that the Swazi culture admires elephants and their family structure. Each king traditionally names someone "the Great She Elephant," entrusting her with guiding the royal family and ensuring that traditions are respected. The incumbent is the king's mother, who served as regent for a few years when her son became king at age 18.
23
Captive elephants have been treated poorly in the United States for over two hundred years, including shooting, poisoning, hanging, long term imprisonment in chains. As poachers, shrinking habitat, and war has ravaged the homelands of African elephants, it is distressing to know that elephants are stuck between two bad choices: living in captivity in zoos that are ill-equipped to handle their prodigious needs, and living in the wild. Some day, the zoo of the future may showcase elephants on huge tracts of protected land, available to virtual visitors who can follow their lives on camera rather than stare at traumatized elephants confined to a postage-stamp world of a zoo.
37
@Ronald Tobias I recall as a child seeing the circus set up across the street from my first-grade classroom window.
I was so excited to go and see the show that night.
As we walked in; the elephants were standing there; chained and despondent.............I recall one giving me the hairy eyeball and not letting me out of its gaze............and I did not leave it out of mine.
I took it on board then everything that elephant told me from its stare.
We deserve to be free and wild.............not hunted or poached; it is what each of us expects for our own treatment as humans and animals are no different.
6
@Ronald Tobias Yes. And never forget the execution by electrocution of Asian elephant “Topsy” on Coney Island in 1903 ( at the suggestion of Thomas Edison) after she had killed one of her handlers. I cry every time I see a reference to it.
3
@Ronald Tobias
Don't forget the electrocution execution of Topsy the Elephant at Coney Island in 1903.
3
A beautifully written and informative article that brought me to tears. I’ve always been amazed at these majestic creatures. To see an elephant up close, I will go to their natural environment. Never again will I visit an elephant in a zoo.
41
@Caroline That's wonderful if you can afford to go to their natural environment. I have visited Africa several times and seen elephants up close. However only a very few fortunate people have the means to go to Africa to see elephants. Most of the children in these countries have never seen an elephant or lion in their lives. They don't have access to transport nor can they afford the park entrance fees.
3
I used to love zoos when I was young, but now I cannot visit them. They feel like sorrow. The more I have learned about animal consciousness and the more exposure I’ve had to traumatized and abused animals (dogs, who often suffer from cruel confinement), the more I believe that zoos are not for the benefit of the residents.
97
@Passion for Peaches
I used to love zoos, too. I can't believe that I did
4
Excellent and balanced article. The remarks from AZA President Dan Ashe reflect and confirm his misplaced priorities and lack of compassion. Two top female AZA executives resigned in protest after Mr. Ashe chose an old buddy of his to deliver the keynote speech at the AZA's National Conference a couple of years ago. Ashe defended his choice amid much protest from all quarters. Last year, the keynote speaker, Wayne Pacelle, was fired for sexual assault and harassment of more than 50 women. I hope AZA replaces Ashe.
30
Amazing article. I visited a park in Tanzania. One group of Tembo, the swahili word for Elephant, had a young elephant with a short trunk, potentially bitten in some sort of attack. The guide said that the group members helped that one to eat, drink and do other things that his shortened trunk would not let him do. That type of compassion told me that these animals were more like us than we thought.
The author seems to be drawing comparisons to forms of human captivity; trips from Africa, cages, chains, prisons, which could have equally damaging consequences.
Wonderful piece.
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@T
Possibly cut off in a snare to catch bush meat.
All efforts of conservation are best dedicated to the source. Transporting elephants or any creature, for that matter, from its natural surroundings requires time, money and personnel that can be better embraced and used for education and care in their home environments. It is part of the giant cycle of respect that we as humans can embrace even though in the wilds of the world there is a natural pecking order among the animals that we must accept. Apparently the animals can accept that but we as humans find it hard to handle. Working against Mother Nature is a considerable and unending task.
25
Well, this was hard to read. I love zoos, and I'm a long term member of the Dallas Zoo discussed here. Having been there at least 100 times over the last 20 years, my dollars have had a direct impact on these imported elephants. I was also among the first to take my kids to go see the newborn calf, Ajabu. He's really adorable and cool. They still bill these elephants as having been rescued from "drought-stricken Swaziland," too. Now, I feel bad about the whole thing. I have to say though that I've never witnessed these elephants looking anything other than content -- and I kept a skeptical eye out for those captive behaviors long before I read this -- so it's some small consolation for a difficult situation.
I also keep thinking back to a time when an acquaintance of mine proudly showed me pictures of an elephant she'd killed on an African Safari saying, and I quote, "they were destroying crops and the villagers wanted us to cull them," as if they were doing those poor villagers a big favor. Aghast, I told the lady off, saying she'd most likely been suckered by a corrupt safari guide, and have never spoken to her again, but it illustrates a sad fact. Africa is still being exploited at a dizzying pace by people like us wealthy Americans. It is very likely that, if our Zoos can't figure out how to sustain populations of elephants and other endangered creatures, then they will likely go extinct all together. So, what is the solution? I'm no longer sure.
82
@Brannon Perkison The elephant hunter was probably telling you the truth. Africa's rapidly increasing population is escalating conflict between humans (who need to grow food to eat) and elephants (whose lands are being taken over for cultivation). Hunters are doing the subsistence farmers a big favour and as a bonus, the people will get a big portion of much appreciated elephant meat. With any luck some of the trophy fee will go to help the locals (this depends on the locality). Don't let your disgust with big game hunting blind you to its benefits for impoverished people trying to survive among dangerous wild animals like elephants.
3
What is the life expectancy of elephants in captivity vs. elephants in the wild ?
5
@Wayne E. in the wild, 60 or 70. In Asia, elephants have been rescued to sanctuary in their 7os and a few are still alive at age 80. In zoos, it is less than half of that. As one example, at the Oregon Zoo, 21 of the 28 elephants born at the zoo are dead, the average age of death is 24.
35
@Wayne E. I'm not sure it matters. I'd rather live 10 years free than 20 years in captivity.
3
@Courtney
Truth be average is 45-50 for Asian Elephants for both wild and captive. If we want to look at average age of sanctuary elephants just take a look at the memorial pages and you will see just how many have died.....
1
We are a country that puts asylum seeking parents and their children, no matter how young, in separate cages. Attorneys acting in our name appear in court to argue that we have no duty to provide our captives with soap or toothbrushes, fresh water, a bed to sleep on, or a diet more varied than bologna sandwiches.
Of course elephants suffer in captivity, and greatly. But how surprising can it be that a country capable of caging asylum seekers as if they were unwanted stray animals would also be incapable of prohibiting the caging of profitable wild animals?
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@Julie
America leads the world in mass incarceration of human beings.
And while only 5% of humans are American America has 25% of the planets prisoners. Even though only 13 % of Americans are black like Ben Carson and Tim Scott 40% of the prisoners are black African American. Because blacks are persecuted for acting like white people do without any criminal justice consequences.
3
Credit to the Bronx Zoo for doing the ethical thing.
Its parent organization, the Wildlife Conservation Society, is the leader in conservation field research.
Shame on the San Diego Zoo and the rest.
78
@RebeccaTouger the Bronx Zoo hasn't done the ethical thing, if by ethical you mean allowing its elephants to live out their lives at a sanctuary instead of in a tiny, cold-climate zoo where each of the remaining two elephants lives separate from the other. Deciding more than a decade ago not to get more elephants was a good decision, but three (now two) elephants continued to suffer there, and suffer still.
14
@RebeccaTouger The Bronx Zoo has held Happy as a solitary elephant for 13 years! They have admitted the insufficiency of their enclosure yet are still preventing their elephants from being released to sanctuary where they could find at least a bit of freedom.
6
@RebeccaTouger Without a doubt, the Bronx Zoo is the best. WCS is a true conservation society.
1
Please, let’s all of us help with human populations in Africa, and let’s all just hope for the well being of elephants in their natural home. For goodness sake, could we also stop any hunting of these magnificent animals. Same goes for so much of our home. Let’s stop the hunting of whales (hello,Japan), the open season on grizzly bears in North America. Polar bears too! Can we at least have enough compassion to at least give some peace to what little remains from our carnage? Can we leave even a small left over for our grand children and their grandchildren?
If we cannot do this, we will all deserve the end of our carnage, and with any hope the remaining world will be able to move on without us. My guess is that they will be so much better without us.
Denny Birk, sailor, climber, and general, and lover of our wonderful planet.
28
Not content to interfere with women's reproductive rights/autonomy in the United States, those in charge of this government are withholding funds for family planning in other countries where it is desperately needed. The humans are having difficulty surviving and we know that many people are already becoming climate refugees. We will not help the people and the animals suffer and die as well. I hope that we can wake up as a nation and fulfill our responsibilities to ourselves and all the other living beings on this planet before it is really too late.
3
It is one thing to breed elephants in a zoo, as Dublin has successfully done for years. It is another thing to ship them half way around the world. This trade should stop.
23
@kate
I get your point and while one may seem better than the other, there's an even better solution which would be to get rid of elephants in captivity altogether. Even for those bred in zoos, it's not natural to confine such a large roaming animal to a small space. Retire the zoo elephants to sanctuaries, let them live the rest of their lives in peace and stop going to zoos that have elephants.
9
I have just emerged from nearly five years of social isolation. I had no shared history with another human being for that length of time. For part of that time I, too, was trapped. I was not, however, a prisoner in a cage. And I understood my situation. I could reason and try and work to escape the isolation. Still, the feeling that descended on me EVERY SINGLE DAY that no other human in the world knew me was excruciatingly painful. My gut hurt all the time. My mind constantly searched in the background for someone, anyone. I met the end of my sanity in my isolation, and fortunately it passed me by, leaving me with my wits. My father tortured me when I was little, but the pain of being without another mind who could see me, respond to me, make me exist in the world was far worse than the pain and humiliation of my father's punishments. Isolation is the worst form of torture that can be inflicted on a living being, human or nonhuman. The evidence is all around us. Zoos are an abomination made worse only in their willful ignorance of the suffering of the beings imprisoned there.
36
Isolation is, regrettably, an all-too common condition for the old, the ill, the disabled, the vulnerable in our society. How can people in such a world be expected to have any understanding or compassion for non-humans when we don’t have it for our fellow humans? I can’t imagine the strength of will it took for you to survive what you experienced. Thank you for sharing your story so that others might learn from it.
6
@Terry Abrahamson Thanks, Terry, I appreciate being seen, acknowledged. I'm not old, ill, disabled, or particularly vulnerable. I made mistakes along the way and let go of people's hands. I knew I was in trouble, and I reached out to everyone I knew, who'd known me before I withdrew. Not one understood the trouble I was in. Each one took my apology and moved on. A series of softly closing doors. The upshot is that the whole experience changed everything for the better. And I feel trained and stronger than I ever have -- it was like a bootcamp for all the life lessons I didn't learn, lessons that will help me keeping doing the work to share my experience so other humans understand what it means to turn your back on someone who tells you s/he is isolated.
1
Important article. However, it far too long if you want people to read it in its entirety, and perhaps make a greater impact.
14
There are numerous false aspects in this article. One elephants only move for food, water, mating, and avoiding habitat degradation . So some may travel many miles and others don’t, in a Borneo elephant study they found that one elephant only traveled 500m a day that’s it. Toronto Zoo didn’t lose its accreditation over them moving the elephants to a sanctuary. They lost it because the city council intervened in the zoos affairs and sent them to PAWS without the zoos involvement. What happened after shipping? Why one is dead and the other two are solitary. PAWS also has a solitary tuberculosis positive female Asian elephant. Sanctuary is still captivity and I would be curious to see what staffing levels are in comparison to an accredited facility. Staffing levels= care. Of the two big sanctuaries one is accredited by the AZA so not breeding them is not an issue as they don’t breed them. 76 elephants passing away in zoos may seem like a lot but 96 die each day so.... the problem with elephant care is the vast majority of elephants came to North America in the 70’s and 80’s. The care back then was not ideal. As elephants are long lived animals many of their issues stem from this time. An elephant orphaned then was fed milk substitutes that were not complete nutrition. Zoo’s in the last 10 years have changed their programs up drastically. If you cannot maintain a herd of elephants you shut your program down. New standards require female calves to stay with mom for life.
23
Endangered animals need to be rescued from places where they're unsafe, being slaughtered. But why put them in miserable little cells? The Los Angeles Zoo for instance, is surrounded by 4,310 acres of public parkland including a huge golf course, yet their elephants, hippos and other animals are squished into miserable little enclosures. Why not make a safari type of enclosure for these animals (with overhead bridges for viewing). It would put the L.A. Zoo on the map.
35
@maureen Mc2
Don’t get me started on the treatment of the elephants at LA Zoo!
I went often as a child and only once as an adult with my sister’s family after the new elephant habitat had opened. Because of the design of habitat and males and females must be kept separately, the elephants have to be periodically restricted from parts of the habitat to allow both sexes adequate access to the entirety of the space. When I was there, Billy the elephant was sequestered while Ruby and her companion had the space. The entire time I was there, Billy stood at the gate, banging his head on it, repeatedly. I was unnerved and freaked out by it. I was so deeply affected and disbelieving of what I witnessed, I broke off from my group some time later to return to the exhibit alone to see how Billy was doing. He was still at the gate, banging away with no one around to address or manage his obvious distress.
I’m haunted by the spectacle to this day and follow any news on the continued attempts to transfer him to the PAWS sanctuary up north. I do love your idea of opening up Griffith Park to further enlarge zoo habitat space though. It would indeed be groundbreaking!
27
@left coast finch
Many thanks for sharing your story about Billy -- however distressing.
I'm curious to know if you had the chance to talk with zoo personnel about what you saw then and how they might have responded. It doesn't sound as if you did at the time, but your concern might support efforts to transfer him to the PAWS sanctuary. Just a thought ~
5
One of my earliest memories is of a family excursion to “ York’s Wild Kingdom” in Maine and becoming distressed on seeing a tiger in a tiny enclosure pacing back and forth repeatedly in his too small space. More than fifty years later, it is amazing that abusing animals in this way is still considered entertainment.
70
@Maggie. Oh, I remember crying the one time I went there as a child. The bear and the solitary asian elephant, who was "giving" rides to children. The place is still open and is an abomination. When asked why I was crying I explained that elephants need to be with other elephants, they are so social and it was animal cruelty to keep one like that.
I am disappointed in the San Diego zoo, all these administrators know what these animals need for physical and emotional needs, so why break up groups and stress them out further? Shame on us. I haven't stepped foot in a zoo since the 80s and will never do so.
8
American lawyer Clarence Darrow once said, “Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.” We couldn’t agree more.
Friends of Animals takes on seemingly impossible fights because it’s the right thing to do. The New York Times Magazine exposes the lies told by U.S. zoos and the Swaziland government and offers a glimpse into our efforts to protect elephants against all odds and our new legal strategies to prevent future elephant imports to U.S. zoos. Taking down fences in Africa’s National Parks or translocating elephants to different wildlife reserves—human assisted migration—is the right thing to do.
We can’t let people get away with saying elephants are safer in zoos than in the wild.
49
An intense story, and intensive journalism.Thank you.
25
I never go to zoos and make sure to declare so in front of my friends' children so that they'll ask why and I can explain their cruelty.
44
Want African Elephants in America. A 1000-2000 square mile enclosure would be acceptable.
18
Elephants are extremely intelligent creatures. They form strong social bonds that last over decades. They mourn their dead. Keeping them in captivity is animal cruelty full stop.
Imagine being confined to your house or apartment...FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. That is what zoo captivity is to a wild animal that ranges over hundreds of miles in their natural habitat. You would become extremely depressed. Some people would even suicidal.
Ban all zoos!
50
Dogs are exceptionally smart, form social bonds that last a lifetime and mourn loss of loved ones. Is keeping them cruel?
1
Complete false equivalency about dogs. This was already addressed in a previous post. Dogs have been bred over thousands of years to live with humans and are not like elephants socially or in their need to be in the wild.
6
I want every elephant to be able to roam free, to be in their natural habitat, and be happy. However that human sprawl that the article mentions isn't going to stop. So we need to make our zoos nicer places for captive elephants because in another century that is the only place you'll still find them.
11
@md, understand your point. However, humans being able to “find” elephants is not really what’s important to elephants.
If we drive a species to extinction, perhaps we should not keep a few remaining as essentially our pets just so that we can pretend that we didn’t cause their extinction.
14
I haven't been to a zoo in decades - and neither to an aquarium. Animals and fish that range over hundreds and even thousands of square miles are "caged" by zoos and aquariums who boast respectively about the hundreds of acres or 5-million gallon tanks in which their animals "live." Humans are the only animals who cage, imprison and otherwise deprive other animals of their liberty for our viewing pleasure.
34
@Bernard
Thank you for also pointing out the confinement of and cruelty to fish. I don't know how people can justify to themselves, let alone 'enjoy,' keeping a live creature in a tiny space so they can observe them as if they were inanimate objects.
4
This piece opened my eyes to some of the ways in which elephants suffer in captivity. It seems to me that all zoos should phase out their elephant displays. Certainly they shouldn't import elephants from Africa.
Just one complaint: The author cites PETA as a source in two places. PETA's actions when it comes to pet dogs are terrible enough, in my opinion, to make finding another source imperative. Don't legitimize PETA by citing them as an authority on anything.
Nathan J. Winograd in the HuffPost has reporting on PETA and pet dogs, for those who may want to learn more.
13
Perhaps elephants should only go to large sanctuaries, rather than zoos. The public could still visit, and perhaps learn more about the natural behaviors of elephants. Some elephants need sanctuary--especially those rescued from circuses or tourist attractions in South Asia that abuse the very creatures people want to see. Even the best zoos seem to have problems. We visit the wonderful Oakland Zoo, which includes a very large elephant habitat, but I was saddened on a return visit to find the calf a female had been carrying was stillborn.
16
Captivity disease is a terrible thing as it manifests in many physical and psychological forms. Domestics animals likewise might suffer captivity malady as many dogs and cats are house-bound or home alone while busy families go about very busy life. Upwards of 15% of domestic dogs suffer from gastrointestinal anomaly without a diagnostic disease diagnosis or cause. Home alone animals are the new norm as most domestic pets are locked behind doors typically for long hours each day. Home alone animals are expected to shutdown normal bowel and bladder function or until the owners return home.
14
I have two cats. I’ve observed the thing you are talking about in one of them. She definitely had psychological issues stemming from an inside life.
My boy cat will not go outside even when you leave the doors to the apartment wide open. That includes the balcony. He’s not interested in the least. My girl cat needs to be taken outside every day (we can’t let her go by herself, because we live in an apartment building on a busy street and she’d surely get run over by a car). Ever since we’ve started taking her on „walks“, she’s stopped compulsively licking all of her fur off and seems much happier. It’s a small consolation, but it’s what we can do to make her life worth living to her. I hope.
4
@Julia I'm glad you are walking/closely observing your cat when she's outside. Outdoor cats (unattended) kill literally millions of songbirds each year -- some of the bird species are endangered, all of them not needing yet another human-caused stress in their environment.
1
I live near Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo and visit monthly. The zoo continues to spend hundreds of thousands on massive yearly expansions, including the largest elephant exhibit I have ever seen - acres of land for their herd.
Yet I have never seen the elephants use *any* of it. In all my many visits I have never seen the Henry Doorly Zoo's elephants do anything more than stand huddled in the corner of their outdoor exhibit, or mull aimlessly about the cavernous hangar that is their indoor enclosure.
Elephants are seen as a quintessential zoo creature - but perhaps that should change.
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@Samuel
I once visited a friend in a county mental ward as a teen. I never forgot the eerie feeling as we walked down the entry hall, where at least eight of the patients were leaning against the walls, staring at the exit door. They had lots of activities available in the common room, but they hung out staring at that door.
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If we Humans have to have Zoos in the first place, that Zoo should be made as very large, and very natural as possible. Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, under the direction of Dr. Les Fischer, in the 1960's, was the first Zoo (that I know of) that got rid of cages, and replaced them with large moats, or steep canyon-like walls, where the animals could be outdoors, and in a much more natural environment.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium in California follows the same "natural" direction to it's facility, allowing very large aquatic tanks to connect and inter-act, right next to the Ocean.
Education is one thing, but, let's get it right. No one wants to be locked up. Freedom is priceless.
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@W.Wolfe The Lincoln Park zoo is awful--small and crowded and outdated. It may have been the first to do away with cages, but its limited space makes the whole thing outdated.
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One often hears zoo supporters talk about how captive animals and breeding programs are saving these species from extinction.
But what is the point of preserving a species if its native habitat disappears? If the only tigers or elephants that exist in the world are living in zoos, how is that "saving" them? They'll simply be miserable, lonely vestiges of a world that once was.
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@Elizabeth A
You prefer extinction?
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As stated, here is the crux of the problem:
"The greatest threat to wildlife in Africa today is the uncontrolled spread of human sprawl. As far as it sprawls, nature dies. And that’s the reality on the ground. It’s not the nice idea that people cook up and suggest, but that’s the reality."
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Thank you for this excellent analysis. Elephants by any measure, do not belong in captivity. The psychological suffering is no doubt the worst, as it is for human prisoners. And fyi, some accredited zoos do still use bullhooks. The Oregon Zoo claims to use them "rarely", but once an elephant sees a bullhook, fear is instilled, as the elephant knows what it can do. And the Edmonton Zoo also among others uses the bullhook. The Barcelona Zoo was mandated by the city to stop breeding unless the animals can be returned to the wild, so that is one hopeful sign for the future, and a zoo in N. Carolina created a virtual reality tour of Africa, another promising sign. When will we humans finally understand that animals, especially the largest land mammal on earth, with such incredible intelligence and sensitivity, are much like us in their desire for freedom. Studies show people learn more about elephants from films and vidoes, what they see in zoos are depressed beings who pace and bob and act nothing like their wild counterparts.
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As time goes on we seem to repeatedly learn that animals are more sentient and have deeper emotional lives than we previously thought. Knowing this makes it hard to enjoy seeing animals in captivity. It always pained me, but as an adult it pains me so much that I don't go to zoos.
I don't know all the ramifications of stopping support of zoos, but you can donate to conservation organizations (good ones) instead and let the animals live the best lives they can in the wild or a wild-like sanctuary if living in the wild is impossible.
If the people who manage zoos are as insensitive about the harm they cause as it appears here, then they don't deserve our support.
Callousness towards animal suffering is one step away from callousness towards human suffering, which we are also too guilty of. Caring for vulnerable animals or humans of the world is an act that has more beneficial consequences than just for the individuals involved.
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@Hdb "Callousness towards animal suffering is one step away from callousness towards human suffering." Humans are animals. That is the core problem here, believing that the human animal is somehow more deserving of empathy, care and respect.
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@AJF
Excellent point, but we also have those who do not even believe in compassion for humans who live on the other side of our imaginary border lines. They cage them also. It seems the human species can use some improvement in realizing this is one small world and we better get our priorities morally, ethically and intellectually straight.
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@AJF
Believing the human animal is somehow more deserving is the sole work and curse of religion. The Bible specifically sets up the fallacy that man was created especially in the “image of god” and set apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. Furthermore, “god” gave man “dominion over the animals”. Just another sad and heartbreaking example of the utter poison that religion has unleashed upon the planet. Why do we continue to make space for it in the public sphere?
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I realize this article dealt with the plight of African elephants but it seemed to infer conclusions about elephants in general. Asian elephants have lived in captivity and worked as beasts of burden for centuries in Asia. Do these animals adapt better to a captivity that boarders on domestication in Asia? I accept and agree with what he article said about African elephants but I feel the article did not do much to inform me about the plight and future of all elephants.
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@Steve
The training of those elephants in Asia is usually horrifying, and their lives harsh. There's an excellent movie, Love and Bananas, about the rescue of working elephants in Cambodia. The director, Sandeaun Lek Chailet, has been honored in Asia and America for her efforts.
I was very lucky to see elephants in Kenya a long time ago when I was a Peace Corps volunteer, and never get tired of seeing them, but as our knowledge of their intelligence, emotions, and complex social lives increases, I feel terrible about seeing them in captivity.
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@Steve See Gods in Shackles, Sangita Iyers, feature-length documentary film, revealing the dark side of the southern Indian state of Kerala's glamorous cultural festivals that torture and exploit temple elephants for profit under the guise of culture and religion.
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Thank you for this well-researched thoughtful article. Our baseline for animal intelligence is rewritten daily as we come to realize how little we know about our wild brethren. It may simply be too late to save our planet from ourselves but I am going to keep trying every day.
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Isn't it just possible that elephants are individuals, and some are happy to be safe in confinement, just as many were clearly happy to perform for human audiences? Captivity has a great many benefits. Food, health care, adoration, long lives, safety...
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@Grittenhouse
I wouldn’t trade freedom for happiness
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@GrittenhouseSurely you are kidding? No wild animal wants to be confined, no do they want to perform for human beings. My heart bleeds for any animal in a zoo. People who go to zoos should imagine themselves caged inside with animals looking at them. Perhaps they'll get the idea.
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@Grittenhouse Clearly happy to perform for humans? And you know this, how? I have an idea: have yourself confined to a jail cell for the rest of your life. Have everything you do be controlled by someone else. Then request that you be put on display for human audiences to "adore", maybe even perform for (being punished, of course, if you do something wrong). Maybe that sounds good to you, but it surely doesn't to me.
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Are elephants a version of persons? As objects of entertainment are they kept as slaves? In my scientific training, I was told to avoid anthropomorphism. I have become skeptical about the morality of this stance, whether it involves an animal’s possible slavery or how I treat them as food. A significant ethical question: after the line on personhood is drawn, what considerations apply to the treatment of animals that do not fall into the full person category, near miss or not? Sentient animals are intentional actors and have an interest in the avoidance of suffering. Is it ever ethical to inflict harm if there is a way not to? What perspectives and priorities can and perhaps should be weighed? Person status defines a domain where social and legal rights reside, hence a proper abhorrence of slavery and murder. Judges in good faith might differ as to what animals are included as persons, but it is morally and ethically problematic to limit concerns about the quality of a life to whether that life is also a person. Part of being a person is a potential to appreciate this. Since a paradigmatic person can weigh hedonic, prudent, aesthetic, and ethical concerns, all these perspectives have a place in judging the consequence of an action that involves harm, damage, and suffering. It ought to. Since humans can deliberate, we have the inherent potential to reorder values and change our mind. (Adapted from "Descriptive Psychology and The Person Concept", Academic Press, 2019)
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@Wynn Schwartz whether or not an elephant is “a version of a person” is irrelevant, and amounts to deck-stacking. The real question is much simpler. Are zoos, which claim to operate with animals' well-being in mind, actually doing what they say? The skullduggery attending these elephants' removal from Africa suggests that the zoos knew their actions wouldn't stand up to scrutiny.
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@JL Williams
What you are underscoring is clearly significant. The "person" question is "deck-stacking". But that doesn't make it irrelevant. Instead, I've assembled additional perspectives relevant to the case at hand. The stronger case you might have made is whether the personhood question distracts or derails the discussion. I don't think it does.
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@Wynn Schwartz
New Zealand recently bestowed legal personhood on a river. Some believe the planet is a sentient being, a “person,” if that’s the language you like. Agent Smith was right: humans are the virus.
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