Friends of Woodland Park Zoo Elephants

This supportive letter appeared in The Seattle Times in response to our recent press release with Lily Tomlin.

I am very thankful to Lily Tomlin for advocating for our Woodland Park Zoo (WPZ) elephants to improve their present, unhealthy lives ["Cause for star: elephants," NW Tuesday, April 28].

WPZ claims it is giving its three elephants, Watoto, Bamboo and Chai, the best of care and I am sure that they try, but it is not enough. The zoo cannot give them what they don’t have and what these pachyderms need most, which is lots of space. The way they live now is as if we were forced to live in a bathtub for the rest of our lives.

Keeping them here when they could go for free to the 2,700-acre Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee is selfishly wrong. It is time to do the right thing and let them go!

It is great when celebrities lend their names to causes. It attracts more attention from the media and, consequently, the public. Therefore, bravo again to Tomlin for speaking out for those who can’t: the elephants at WPZ.

– Claudine Erlandson, Shoreline

Alyne Fortgang of Seattle, wrote a great response to an article in Seattle Weekly by Damon Agnos, called “New Zoo Review”:

Keeping the planet’s largest land mammal in Woodland Park Zoo’s tiny barn room up to 17 hours a day and in a section of a one-acre yard is blatantly inhumane. Whether looking for food or energized by food, elephants are born with bodies that need to walk great distances for their mental and physical health. Experts have presented decades of research that bears this out.

Since 2000, half of the 63 elephants that have died in AZA-accredited zoos never reached the age of 40. The natural lifespan of elephants is 60–70 years. It is the zoo environment that is killing them prematurely, just as poachers and loss of habitat are doing in the wild—it is the same crime with the same result.

The zoo claims displaying elephants makes people care about them, and then they will donate to conserve them. If this were true, Asian elephants wouldn’t be as endangered today, since people have been seeing them in zoos for more than 200 years. As zoos have adopted their “conservation” ethic to justify incarcerating elephants, numbers have continued to decline.

Conservation of elephants needs to take place in the wild—the ONLY place they should be—not in a “cage” with Olmsted landscaping, to which they have no access.

View this and other letters on seattleweekly.com.

Nancy Farnam’s recent guest commentary in the HeraldNet, about the elephants at Woodland Park Zoo, inspired two supportive letters in response:

Danielle Noel from Vancouver writes about how her family has canceled their annual trips to WPZ after the elephant exhibit just became too depressing for them.

Our family has driven down to the Woodland Park Zoo every year for many years. The most depressing exhibit by far is the elephant exhibit. I cannot, for the life of me, understand how the world’s largest land mammal has ended up stuck in a small, 1-acre yard and even at that, the yard is broken up into smaller yards because two of the elephants can’t get along.

Glenda T. Berg from Des Moines writes that even her 6-year-old daughter was able to recognize the elephants’ “tortured swaying and neurotic responses to stress” and will not return to the zoo again.

I, and other parents, have not set foot in the zoo since my daughter and I witnessed their tortured swaying and neurotic responses to stress. (My daughter noticed it at age 6, and hasn’t forgotten it since). I have heard similar sentiments from other concerned former zoo-goers over the years, and still nothing is done to change the horrific conditions these magnificent animals have to endure.

If you see an article about WPZ or zoo elephants, help keep the public dialog going by writing a letter to the editor!

Nancy Farnam from Edmunds writes a compelling letter to the editor in response to the Seattle P-I article about captive elephants’ lifespans being shorter than those of wild elephants.

A study published last week confirms what animal advocates have known for years. Elephants live a lot longer in the wild than they do in zoos (“Elephants live longer in the wild, study finds,” Dec. 11).

One amazing finding was that Asian elephants born in zoos have much shorter lifespans. In fact, 76 percent of those born in recent years have died before age ten, 57 percent from herpesviruses. Woodland Park Zoo’s 6-year old elephant, Hansa, became one of these tragic statistics last year. Failure of zoos to practice infection control has allowed the deadly viruses to spread through the captive populations and are decimating young Asian elephants, the most susceptible to the viruses.

Adult zoo elephants die prematurely from ailments caused by inadequate space and being forced to stand on hard surfaces for years. Woodland Park Zoo’s records reveal that its surviving elephants all suffer from arthritis and chronic foot infections.

Woodland Park Zoo should join the growing list of zoos that have realized they can’t properly care for elephants. Bamboo, Watoto, Chai and Sri should be retired to The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee where they will finally have the space and freedom they need to thrive and the chance to live a normal lifespan.

2 excellent letters appeared in the Seattle Times in response to its article, “Elephant’s pregnancy raises health concerns”.

Check out both letters in the Seattle Times.

4 Letters to the editor related to Woodland Park Zoo’s elephants appeared in the Seattle P-I.

Check out the full text in the Seattle P-I.

2 Letters to the editor appear, one in favor and one against the zoo’s elephant program.

Read the letters in the Seattle P-I

1 Letter appears in the Seattle Times pointing out the poor conditions and short life spans for elephants in zoos.

Read the letter to the editor

3 Letters appear in the Seattle Times in response to the death of 6-year-old elephant Hansa.

Read these letters in the Seattle Times

A letter appears in the Seattle P-I about the poor conditions at WPZ’s elephant exhibit and the condition of Bamboo.

Read the letter in the Seattle P-I