Tearing Connie and Shaba apart is unconscionable.

Reid Park Zoo elephants

A fundamental requirement in elephants is being a bonded member of a social group.  Anyone who knows anything about elephants knows this, yet the Tucson City Council succumbed to Reid Park Zoo and voted to separate them.

Please help these elephants by filling out IDA’s form:  Click here.

It’s fast and so important.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/11/24/zoo-to-send-elephants-to-california-reserve

Unfortunately, the elephant keepers are still resisting what’s best for the elephants by not allowing Ed Stewart from PAWS to see the elephants. Hopefully the elephant keepers will  sign on to this compassionate move so that PAWS can work with the elephants on training for their transport.

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1092744

“There will be a time when people will be shocked that we ever allowed the suffering of these animals in the name of entertainment to continue so long. Elephants living in chains and being beaten; lions and tigers in small cages on trucks, being whipped to perform tricks; it’s the dark ages. This bill helps bring us out of the dark ages.”   -BOB BARKER

Visit the PAWS website to learn more

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Click here to find out how you can help

Click here to view the embedded video.

The following message is from The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee…

My dear friends,

I write to you with very sad news. Tarra’s little dog Bella has died. We found her body on Wednesday and have been dealing with the aftermath ever since, trying to work out what happened while we look after Tarra and each other.

We noticed Bella was not with Tarra at breakfast on Tuesday and later that morning she still had not appeared. Tarra and Bella have always spent short periods apart as one goes off exploring briefly on their own, but this longer absence worried us deeply and a search of the property was started which continued into the next day. The search ended tragically when Bella’s body was found close to the Asia barn that had long been home to Tarra, her five sisters and Bella. During the time of the search our usually social Tarra chose to remain alone, watched over by concerned Caregivers.

Dr. Scott, our vet of sixteen years, examined Bella for the last time and, with advice from the experts from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, determined the probable cause of death was an attack by animals, most likely coyotes. We have sent off samples to see whether there were any other contributory causes.

Having carefully examined Bella’s wounds and the place where she was found, we concluded that Bella had not been attacked near where she was found and neither could she have walked there.

As these investigations were taking place observant Caregivers, even more watchful of Tarra than usual, noticed blood on the underside of her trunk, evidence that pointed us in the direction of what likely happened that fateful night.

The most probable scenario is that during the night Bella strayed from Tarra briefly and was set upon. Tarra arrived too late to save her but was able to stop further damage being done to Bella’s body. With deep sadness and deeper wonder we come to comprehend what likely happened next—that Tarra picked Bella up and carried her home.

Further evidence in support of our belief for what happened comes from Tarra herself. After Bella had been found, Caregivers ensured Tarra had every chance to inspect Bella’s body before it was buried and to come to terms with her death, as this is an important part of the grieving process for elephants. But Tarra was not interested in either Bella or the group of Caregivers who would normally have drawn our inquisitive Girl to see what was happening.

It was only later when we had pieced together the whole picture that Tarra’s behavior at Bella’s grave made sense. Our poor, brave, loving Girl knew what had happened to her beloved Bella and, in the dark hours of the night as she carried her body home, had come to terms with her death.

Tarra’s sisters will help her through her sadness. Although we cannot take away Tarra’s pain immediately or the pain of all those that knew Bella, I do know Bella knew true love and true freedom. It will always be so for animals that find Sanctuary.

Rob Atkinson
CEO

The Toronto City Council overruled the Zoo’s interests and used science and compassion in making their decision to choose a life that is healthiest for their elephants.

Like Toronto’s elephants, Seattle’s three elephants:  Bamboo, Chai and Watoto spend over half the year locked in a barren barn stall barely large enough to turn around.   Our elephants’ lock up lasts 16–17 hours a day with either Bamboo or Watoto in solitary confinement.

Like Toronto’s elephants, our elephants have less than one acre of outdoor space.

Like Toronto’s elephants, our elephants exhibit repetitive neurotic behaviors called stereotypies due to the trauma of captivity and crushing boredom.

Like Toronto’s elephants our elephants are very costly to house: about $400,000.00 each year.

When the Toronto Zoo looked into expanding the elephant exhibit, they discovered the costs were prohibitive.  The LA Zoo, for example, spent $42.5 million in 2009 on a 3.6 acre display—inadequate the day it opened.

Bull hook - photo from IDA

After centuries of elephant keepers in zoos beating elephants into submission and compliance, AZA requires zoos holding elephants to adopt Protected Contact management.

Friends of Woodland Park Zoo Elephants is pleased that the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) has directed all zoos in their system to transition to an elephant management method called “protected contact”.  Protected contact requires that there is always a barrier between the keeper and the elephant.

Under the former method of management called “free contact”, the keeper shares the same space as the elephant.  This requires the use of the sharp pointed bullhook to protect the keeper.  Elephants under this form of management have been routinely beaten so the mere sight of the bullhook instills fear and submission.  About half of the zoos in the AZA system still uses this antiquated and cruel method but that will change by Sept. 1, 2014.

Protected contact improves the quality of life for elephants who live under the fear of the bullhook while improving the safety for those who work with elephants.

When PAWS director Ed Stewart visited the City of Toronto on May 12, 2011, to present PAWS’ formal offer of free lifetime care, relocation and transportation expenses for the Toronto Zoo’s three African elephants, opposition from the Association of Zoos & Aquariums was expected.

What was not expected was the egregious misinformation disseminated by the AZA to the Toronto Zoo Board of Management and the media. This information is considered by PAWS to be not only unprofessional, but also defamatory.

PAWS realizes the AZA’s positions are not always unanimously supported by its member zoos, and because of this PAWS has worked cooperatively on behalf of captive elephants with a number of AZA accredited zoos. Thus, PAWS has provided sanctuary to elephants retired from zoos in Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Alaska.

A letter from PAWS founder, and co-director, Pat Derby, has been sent to the AZA demanding a retraction of their defamatory remarks. A copy of Pat’s letter follows.

(Click the “Continue Reading” link to read Pat Derby’s Letter to the AZA)

Pat Derby’s Letter to the AZA

May 24, 2011

Kristin L. Vehrs
Executive Director
Association of Zoos and Aquariums
8403 Colesville Road, Suite 710
Silver Spring, MD 20910-3314

Dear Ms. Vehrs,

As I write this letter, I continue to be astounded by the intransigent attitude of AZA and the misinformation promulgated by your organization regarding sanctuaries, particularly PAWS’ ARK 2000 in San Andreas, California, information that, in my opinion, is defamatory.

Our management program (protected contact), barns, habitats and protocols are meticulously presented on our website. Therefore, when you suggest “so-called sanctuaries” such as PAWS are staffed with volunteers or untrained individuals, maintain inadequate fencing and barriers and cannot meet the so-called “rigorous” AZA Standards for Elephant Management and Care, I must assume that your organization has, at best, failed to do its research or, at worse, has no regard for the truth about our sanctuary.

For that reason, I find AZA’s statements unfortunate, especially in the wake of the disturbing news reports concerning the training of elephants at the Have Trunk Will Travel movie compound, an AZA affiliated facility, and an organization that promotes its participation with the Elephant Managers Association, the AZA, and the Species Survival Plan.

The decision of some AZA zoos to send elephants to sanctuaries such as PAWS demonstrates that AZA’s pronouncements do not reflect the opinions of all AZA accredited zoos, notwithstanding that those zoos are bound by an agreement to abide by AZA policies with which they may not concur. It is arrogant and disrespectful to those individuals who are committed to the welfare of elephants that their opinions are ignored.

What I have learned and I am sure you well know, there is a wide diversity of opinion and ethical concern within the AZA community regarding the AZA’s posture concerning sanctuaries such as PAWS and that this has exacerbated anger and frustration among many zoo professionals, humane organizations, government officials and members of the public who support sanctuaries.

I suspect the support for sanctuaries such as PAWS within some segments of the AZA community results from the adverse publicity which occurs whenever an accredited AZA facility sends surplus animals to hunting ranches, movie compounds or AZA accredited facilities with neither the space nor the expertise to properly house or integrate them socially.

Sadly, this is evidenced by the transfer of Ruby, an older African elephant, from Los Angeles Zoo to Knoxville with the full support of AZA, EMA and SSP; a plan that failed miserably because there was no plan and no physical plant to facilitate her socialization. In the past, Los Angeles Zoo has also traded elephants with Have Trunk Will Travel with disastrous results for Los Angeles Zoo and San Francisco Zoo.

These irrefutable incidents, and PAWS has documentation of many more, invalidate the AZA assertion that: “the only way to assure that these elephants receive the highest level of care is to send them to an AZA-accredited facility.”

Ruby suffered unnecessarily because of AZA’s insistence that she be sent to an AZA accredited facility; a facility with limited space for socialization, rather than to a sanctuary with the capability to improve her quality of life. One wonders how these pedantic and unreasonable decisions can be construed as “contributing to professional and humane animal management and care.”

Perhaps this contumacious campaign against sanctuaries is fomented by those in AZA who do not conform to their standards and who do not share the proclaimed advocacy for animal welfare and conservation.

The continuing misinformation published by AZA is defamatory and untrue as we have stated for 20 years. In an effort to once again inform you of the true protocols and policies of PAWS, I am listing some of the most egregious misstatements in your publications:

“Non-accredited zoos and private elephant facilities (so-called sanctuaries) are not an appropriate alternative. These are places where elephants live with assistance from people who provide food water and shelter but are not required to meet the rigorous AZA Standards of Elephant Management and Care.”

Unlike most AZA “accredited” facilities, PAWS maintains 24-hour trained keeping staff at our sanctuaries. This eliminates the possibility of leaving a mobile animal at night and discovering a downed animal when keepers return in the morning. This has been our practice for many years and should be part of AZA’s so-called “rigorous” standards, particularly for facilities housing aging arthritic elephants.

While many zoo elephant keepers care for other species as well, our nine experienced elephant keepers, and four apprentice elephant keepers, do not take care of other species. Their time is devoted exclusively to the elephants. We do not utilize volunteers or interns for the care of elephants entrusted to our sanctuary.

Ed Stewart and I (PAWS founders and directors) personally train each of our keepers in hands-on, humane, bullhook-free Asian and African elephant care. This training also includes bull elephants. Together, Ed and I have more than 70 years of experience in elephant care. Brian Busta, our Elephant Supervisor, has more than 15 years of experience with both species, including bulls, and we regularly utilize the services of  Protected Contact Management consultants, Margaret Whittaker and Gail Laule of Active Environments.

“Not all sanctuaries are open to the public or support education and worldwide conservation.”

For many years most zoos have collected elephants and other species from the wild, transporting them to small spaces with artificial habitats, separating them from families and their natural surroundings, to be “ambassadors” for their more fortunate relatives who avoided capture.

PAWS indeed provides public education but does so without subjecting the elephants in our care to the often times inadequate facilities of some AZA accredited facilities. We provide this in the form of periodicals, educational “Seeing the Elephant” weekends, educational seminars and conferences, as well as guest lectures by such esteemed scientists as Joyce Poole, Cynthia Moss, Ian Redmond and others-all focusing on the protection and conservation of the animals that zoos capture in the name of conservation.

i.e. - The highly unacceptable capture of young elephants from Swaziland to replace aging African elephants at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. The older “surplus” elephants were sent from the balmy San Diego climate to the frigid cold of Chicago. They all died within a short period of time. Another AZA-sanctioned transfer that resulted in the deaths of three African elephant “ambassadors” who were the victims of AZA’s carefully conceived public relations campaigns to justify wild capture.

As I write this letter, my colleagues and I are protesting a similar effort by Auckland Zoo, an accredited zoo in New Zealand. This was promoted as a worldwide conservation bid to save elephants in the wild; the zoo is negotiating with an elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka for two juvenile elephants. This can in no way benefit the wild elephants of Sri Lanka.

ARK 2000 is not open to the public. Our time is devoted to the care of the animals who live here. We do, however, conduct controlled tours which are often free for school children and at-risk youth. (View our website.) We also provide educational programs about elephants which promote conservation and habitat protection for wild species. We do not attempt to persuade the public and the media that we are performing some panegyric service to the species that we are forced to confine; we demonstrate the need for conservation of wildlife and habitat.

“AZA accredited zoos have carefully planned elephant breeding programs, which help build the North American herd.”

Sanctuaries do not breed. We are often the recipients of “surplus” animals resulting from breeding programs that are certainly not well planned. The hypocrisy of breeding animals in captivity who will be doomed to live in unnatural enclosures in the name of conservation and science is a practice which should be eliminated by the AZA and replaced with truthful information about captivity and the compelling need to protect wild species and habitat.

AZA zoos have been passing elephants around like baseball cards, trading individuals who have bonded with companions for years to be transported from familiar surroundings and companions, traumatized with the sudden appearance of an aggressive bull or the unpleasant procedures involved in artificial insemination.

If captive breeding programs were incredibly successful, producing a profusion of healthy calves, there would be no benefit to wild elephant populations and the resultant surplus bull elephants would be in need of sanctuary.

AZA is aware of this dilemma since some of the more prolific breeding facilities have for many years been sending surplus bulls and cows to circuses and other facilities with questionable standards of care.

Other comments about the financial incapability of sanctuaries and the lack of accountability is outrageous and insulting. Sanctuaries are 501(c)3 non-profit organizations operating within the strictest financial guidelines of the federal and state governments. We are audited annually and our 990 is always available on our website.

PAWS has been operational for more than 27 years, growing and improving annually with no support from city, state or federal tax funds. The continuing complaint of zoos with substandard housing for elephants is their inability to fund improvements for the animals in their care. Today, with city, state and federal funding at a record low, many zoos are forced to make drastic cuts in their budgets.

For many years, PAWS has attempted to establish good working relations with AZA to no avail. While we have respected the progressive zoo directors and dedicated keeping and veterinary staff at many zoos, the animosity and defamatory statements generated by AZA undermines these efforts and does not reflect the opinions of many wonderful zoo directors and staff that we have met. Our relationship with those special facilities, despite the deceptive propaganda distributed by AZA, is a source of pride to PAWS.

PAWS has great respect for those individual facilities, but we are opposed to the philosophy of the Elephant Manager’s Association and the brutish proponents of dominance training, who feel that electricity and bullhooks (or other weapons) are “acceptable training tools” and who ridicule members who practice Protected Contact in elephant management.

AZA professes to be professional and the leader in elephant care, yet the history of AZA and their lack of enforcement of their own standards which are considerably lower than sanctuaries, repudiates this shallow posturing, and the frequent exposures of abusive training at AZA approved facilities indicates a critical need for reform.

For all of the reasons stated above, and many others which are well documented, PAWS proudly declares we are not an AZA accredited facility. Furthermore, we insist that AZA cease from publishing defamatory statements about our sanctuary. The quotes of Toronto Zoo staff based on your misinformation have led Toronto media and the Zoo Board to make public statements about “fearing the animals may be mistreated at a sanctuary.” This is reprehensible, unprofessional, false and damaging to our reputation.

Sincerely,

Pat Derby
Director and Founder
Performing Animal Welfare Society

cc: Board of Management of the Toronto Zoo
Mayor Rob Ford, City of Toronto
USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack
USDA Deputy Under Secretary John Ferrell
Toronto Sun
Toronto Life
Associated Press International
Richard Bickelman, Esq.

Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium (PDZA) is holding a public comment meeting to discuss their 10-year plan which includes closing their tiny elephant exhibit – but not until poor Hanako and Suki die.

WHY WAIT for them to die? Why force them to continue to live in this physically and psychologically harmful environment?

Please come to ask (or write) that the humane decision be made. Ask for Hanako and Suki to be retired to an elephant sanctuary.

When: THIS Monday, April 25^th from 4:30 – 6pm. Come anytime!

Location:
Metro Parks Headquarters Board Room
4702 South 19^th Street
Tacoma, WA

If you can’t come: Please e-mail the zoo at:  strategicplan@pdza.org

Or snail mail: Attention Strategic Plan, 5400 North Pearl St. Tacoma, WA 98407
You can also join their facebook page and leave comments supporting the end to the elephant exhibit. https://www.facebook.com/PtDefianceZoo

To be most effective, be polite and thoughtful.

I always enjoy hearing how celebrities use their fame and money to give back. It’s even better when the celebrity is a fellow Michigander, like Lily Tomlin.

Tomlin has chosen to devote her spare time in a crusade against elephants in captivity. And on January 20th, she will speak on behalf of the new documentary Elephants and Man: A Litany of Tragedy. The film covers the history of elephants in captivity and exposes the cruelty that is at the center of this history. You can watch the film on YouTube, split into seven segments, but prepare yourself for the graphic content.

Throughout the years, Tomlin has spoken out against zoos housing elephants. She fought against the $42 million enclosure at the Los Angeles Zoo, championed a quest to relocate an elephant at the Dallas Zoo, and has joined the battle to urge Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo to remove their three elephants.

Read the full story on elephants.com

Photo from knoxnews.com

Stephanie James didn’t need to die.  If the Knoxville Zoo used protected contact which means that there is always a barrier between the elephant and keeper, James would be alive today.

The Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) which accredits zoos abrogated their responsibility by not requiring protected contact as a condition for accreditation. Protected contact is used in only about half of AZA accredited zoos.

However looking at the bigger picture:  It’s time for humans to understand that we can’t take a highly intelligent and social animal like an elephant and deprive it of all that is instinctual.  If the public knew what it takes to dominate an 8,000 pound elephant they would be appalled.  Edie’s reaction to decades of dominance, severe confinement, lack of space and sensory deprivation is not surprising – about 1 elephant keeper a year is killed in zoos and circuses.

The answer to saving keeper lives is to not display elephants in zoos in the first place.

Read the full story here