In close quarters: local activists continue to demand more space for the Woodland Park Zoo elephants

Also check out the response to this article from The Elephant Sanctuary’s CEO

Here is an excerpt from the article:

One of the main complaints against WPZ is that the three elephants endure solitary confinement and a lack of social experience.

With roughly one acre of yard space outside, these elephants have four pens to roam in and their heated indoor barn is divided into four separate holding areas, according to the zoo’s website.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton once wrote in a National Geographic article that elephants travel for three things: sex, sustenance and safety.

“We have all of that here – the elephant’s travel is resource-based and we are always looking for ways to enhance that,” said WPZ’s elephant curator, Bruce Upchurch. “What we have now is enough. We have quality space, it’s just the amount that’s the issue.”

Alyne Fortgang, co-founder of the Friends of the Woodland Park Zoo Elephants, doesn’t agree.

“After years of having people take pictures and staring at them, these elephants have become living shells of a being,” she said. “They look like zombies, exude little emotion, and hardly even act alive compared to wild elephants that are in movement 20 hours a day.”

I have two main concerns with the Woodland Park Zoo elephants [“Zoo sued over care of elephants,” NWWednesday, June 30]. The first lies in the way Chai is continuously inseminated despite the knowledge she will once again pass deadly herpes to any of her future offspring.

Any calf born at Woodland Park Zoo may likely die from Elephant Endotheliotropic Herpesvirus (EEHV) before the age of 10. Of the young Asian elephants who get sick with herpes, 85 percent die.

My second concern lies in the knowledge that elephants need room to walk. Only in nice weather can the elephants be out on one acre, an enclosure that does not allow for proper lymphatic circulation. The Tennessee sanctuary would give these captive zoo elephants more than 2,000 acres and a natural water source.

The notion that we must keep elephants chained behind bars is antiquated in the time of webcam, when a visit with her at the sanctuary is only as far as the nearest computer screen.

Read all that day’s letters to the editor here.

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

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.

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!

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.

Check out both letters in the Seattle Times.

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

Read the letters in the Seattle P-I

Read the letter to the editor