Airplane banner over WPZ (photo from Ballard News-Tribune)

On Friday, July 15, the Friends of the Woodland Park Zoo Elephants took their protest to the air. Towing a banner with the message “Zoo elephants suffer”, an airplane flew over Woodland Park Zoo and the surrounding neighborhoods.

“When people see the aerial message, we hope they will contact the Seattle City Council and WPZ to ask for the release of these long-suffering elephants to the Sanctuary”, says Sandy Clinton of Friends of the Woodland Park Zoo Elephants.

As the airplane was coming in from Renton, members of Friends of Woodland Park Zoo Elephants and Sound Animal Rights Alliance lined the West entrance of the Woodland Park Zoo, calling for the release of the Zoo’s elephants to The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee.

Read the full story in the Ballard News-Tribune

The local group crusading for the release of the Woodland Park Zoo’s three elephants will be receiving a little air support in their fight tomorrow when an airplane trailing a banner reading, “Zoo elephants suffer,” will take to the Seattle skies.

Alyne Fortgang, of Friends of Woodland Park Zoo Elephants, said the aerial message –flying above the zoo and I-5 during rush-hour traffic – will help the group reach tens of thousands of eyes.

Friends of Woodland Park Zoo Elephants has been advocating for the release of the elephants to the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, claiming the small space of captivity at the zoo is causing the animals physical and mental ailments.

Read the full story here

Woodland Park Zoo

The Stranger takes a very in-depth look at Woodland Park Zoo’s elephants, their quality of life, the tragic death of Hansa and various mental and physical illnesses suffered by all of WPZ’s elephants, and much much more.

Read the full article, Cash Cows: Is Woodland Park Zoo Mistreating Its Elephants?

The following excerpt from the article shows that another nearby zoo, Pt. Defiance in Tacoma, is able to acknowledge that these tiny zoo habitats are inadequate for elephants, due to their physical and mental needs.

The Detroit Zoo is the only zoo in the nation to voluntarily retire all of its elephants to a sanctuary. The Bronx Zoo has stated that it will shut down its two-acre elephant exhibit once the elephants living there now die off. Even the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma acknowledges that elephants need more room to roam than it can provide and is exploring “transitioning away” from keeping elephants (again, once its current elephants die off).

“We’d like to have more space—our yard is about an acre—but our footprint doesn’t allow much for expansion,” says John Houck, deputy director of the Point Defiance Zoo. There are also only about 150 Asian elephants nationally, and captive breeding programs just aren’t working, he says. “We need to see about nine calves born a year, nationwide, and we’re averaging about two. It’s really a numbers game. When we lose these two current elephants, what will we do?”

Still, the Woodland Park Zoo has no plans to retire its elephants or expand its space. It continues to try to breed more babies on its one-acre plot.

Read the full article here

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.”

Chai in ERD (elephant restraining device) - photo from mynorthwest.com, Dennis Dow

Woodland Park Zoo (WPZ) artificially inseminated Chai, a female elephant, for the 60^th time.  Inseminated 50 times prior to her daughter, Hansa’s, birth and 10 times since have yielded only miscarriages.  Hansa, died of the deadly endotheliotropic elephant herpes virus (EEHV).  Watoto, one of three elephants on display at WPZ, tested positive in 2008 for the same strain of EEHV that killed Hansa.  There is no cure and WPZ has no infection control in place—in fact Chai could transmit the virus to her own fetus.

The virus attacks the internal organs causing massive hemorrhaging and a painful, gruesome death.  “To even take a chance of causing another defenseless calf such a horrific death is unconscionable and unethical” says Nancy Pennington, co-founder of Friends of Woodland Park Zoo Elephants (FOWPZE).

“Breeding elephants to live on public display is a moral question as well”, adds Pennington.  Due to Seattle’s wet and cold climate the elephants are locked in a tiny barn stall for 16-17 hours daily for 7 months of the year.  Outside the elephants have less than one acre.  This is an inhumane amount of space causing physical and psychological harm to these far-ranging elephants.

FOWPZE has made WPZ management, the Woodland Park Zoological Society, and the Seattle City Council aware of the consequences of this deadly breeding program.

The statistics and current science clearly show it is irresponsible to breed in the herpes-infected Woodland Park Zoo.

Good afternoon board members, Thank you for sharing a few minutes of your time today. I also want to thank you for the time, energy and financial support you provide to Woodland Park Zoo.   It’s a great resource for our community and for conservation. However, I too have significant reservations about the zoo’s elephant program.  My concerns are not about the care they are given, but about the insurmountable limits on the resources we can provide.

I work at Google as a software designer, and I AM a bit of a math nerd, but it doesn’t take much smarts to see that the numbers don’t add up. There are too many troubling statistics for me to cover tonight, so I’ll just touch on three.

First: space.  Asian elephants typically roam over an area on the order of 200 square miles. That’s 128,000 acres — 128 THOUSAND TIMES as much space as the one acre that Chai, Bamboo and Watoto all share.  And that’s the conservative estimate — many elephants roam far larger areas.

Secondly:  companionship.  Elephants are incredibly social creatures who, in the wild, travel in large herds and frequently interact with other groups. Over the course of a day they might encounter 20 to 200 other elephants. These social connections are known to be vital for an elephant’s well being. So it’s fair to say that in the elephant world, three is hardly a crowd… especially when two of those elephants don’t get along and must be constantly separated.

Third: foot and joint disease. In the United States in the last decade, there were 74 deaths of zoo elephants above the age of 10.  Of those, 22 are known to have died from foot or joint disease.  That’s 30 percent. This type of death is almost unheard of in the wild, so clearly the zoo environments and resulting inactivity play a huge role in cutting these lives short.

From Woodland Park Zoo’s own reports, Bamboo and Chai have been treated for foot abscesses — with Chai receiving 80 treatments for foot infections in 2008 alone.  Also, Watoto and Bamboo are reportedly showing symptoms of joint disease.  Sadly, our elephants are all on track to join that fateful 30%.

On a personal note, I live not far away in Ballard with my wife and a 1-year-old daughter. And like most parents I’d like my child to grow up with self awareness and the strength to stand up for her convictions. But I can only teach her those lessons if I lead by example — which is why I’m here tonight asking you to please consider transferring the elephants to a sanctuary, where they can have plenty of space to roam, lots of  companionship, and an environment conducive to foot and joint health.

As much as I’d love to bring my daughter to Woodland Park Zoo, I would be a bit of a hypocrite to do so knowing that the elephants have so little of what they need to live long and healthy lives.

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

WPZ claims “elephants are held in the warm barn . . . when overnight temperatures are below 40°F.” On October 4th the low temp was 49°; on October 9, the low was 56°.

Based on the elephant barn blueprints, the tiny barren stalls are the human equivalent of 4 – 5 feet square. Either Bamboo or Watoto are kept in solitary confinement due to their incompatibility—a consequence of severe confinement.

“It is unconscionable that these intelligent animals, who only sleep 4 hours a day, are kept in a space that causes such severe physical and psychological harm” says Nancy Pennington, FOWPZE Co-founder, “not to mention the crushing boredom.”

WPZ’s claim that space doesn’t matter has no scientific data to back it up. To the contrary, international elephant experts agree that this lack of movement wreaks havoc upon their joints and feet which are already in very poor condition. Foot problems are the main reason elephants in zoos die decades before their natural lifespan. It also contributes to the neurotic repetitive behaviors exhibited by all three elephants: pacing, rocking, swaying, head bobbing and swiveling.

This week the topic is all about the elephants, Bamboo, Chai, and Watoto, at the Woodland Park Zoo. Find out why a Tennessee sanctuary has offered to pay for their permanent transfer there. Martha is joined by experts from all over the country who weigh in on the controversy. Find out why these magnifient creatures are miserable at the zoo and what you can do to help them.

Alyne joins the show approximately a 1/2 hour into the show.

Martha Norwalk: March 21 WPZ Elephants Part 1

Martha Norwalk: March 21 WPZ Elephants Part 2

Martha Norwalk: March 21 WPZ Elephants Part 3

Give the show a listen if you haven’t already and share it with your friends!

Martha Norwalk

Friends of Woodland Park Zoo Elephants will be on Martha Norwalk’s Animal World radio show at AM 1150 from 9am – noon on Sunday, March 21, 2010.

The consequences of zoo confinement on elephants and specifically Bamboo, Chai and Watoto at Woodland Park Zoo will be discussed. Guests will include Carol Buckley, founder of The Elephant Sanctuary, who will share stories of how elephants heal at the sanctuary. Also on the show will be Dr. Mel Richardson, former veterinarian with Woodland Park Zoo, Catherine Doyle, elephant expert with IDA, and others.

Please e-mail comments or questions to animalworldlive @hotmail.com or call toll free 1-888-298-5569.  A good audience response will show Martha Norwalk you appreciate her help in spreading awareness.