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OPINION

Zoo's elephants need more room to roam

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Sunday, October 25, 2009

(Updated 3:00 am)

BY KEITH LINDSAY

Earlier this year, Echo, the well-loved elephant matriarch in Kenya's Amboseli National Park, died at the ripe old age of 64. For decades, my colleagues and I in the Amboseli Elephant Research Project had watched her lead her family around the park and the surrounding ecosystem as they encountered the enriching variety of their life: finding food amid the grasses, bushes and trees; meeting, greeting, and interacting with hundreds of other elephants; resting under shade trees; drinking from rivers and pools; wallowing in mud and dust baths.

When it came to measuring movement, our observation records and radio-tracking showed Echo to be the most conservative of the Amboseli elephants. With a dry season range of around 50 square miles in the area around the National Park swamps, she moved in smaller circles than most of the population. But every time it rained, she would head off for the verdant bush lands, joining other families and independent bulls to range across a much wider area covering hundreds of square miles. When food and water is abundant, wild elephants clearly revel in their unconstrained freedom to roam.

Recent articles on elephants at the North Carolina Zoo (by Doug Clark, Sept. 16, and David Jones, Sept. 27) illustrate just how far the keeping of elephants in captivity diverges from what they need naturally.

Does the size of its living area really matter to an elephant? It is easy to discover from published results and summaries on the N.C. Zoo's own Web site that their collaborative studies in Cameroon show individual elephants using home ranges from hundreds to more than 2,000 square kilometers (770 square miles, or half the size of Rhode Island) in size.

These results echo our research in Amboseli and studies from all over Africa and Asia: Elephants in the wild do not live in anything like the tiny diorama-style patches of land in even the most "modern" zoo exhibit. They live in extensive areas and use them fully, to socialize, find mates and "friends," explore and forage, not to stand around in a display for visitors to observe for a few minutes before moving on to the next attraction.

Elephants that are free to move are also free from the painful and life-threatening joint and foot problems, not to mention the bored, stereotypical swaying and head-bobbing behavior, so often seen in confined animals. So, providing adequate space is good preventative medicine, saving money that would otherwise be spent on expensive veterinary treatments for ailments the zoo environment itself causes, as well as averting misery or premature death.

Rather than seeking to discover and provide the best living conditions from their elephants' point of view, zoos instead make it their priority to entertain (and, they claim, educate) fee-paying customers. Zoos are too often willing to sacrifice elephant well-being as a trade-off for the practicalities of running a public display in the competitive entertainment business.

N.C. Zoo Director Dr. David Jones argues that large enclosures make it harder for visitors to see elephants. If the best interests of the elephants were a priority, these animals would not be kept in confined conditions simply to force them closer to the audience. Plenty of creative alternatives exist to bring the audience closer to the animals. These could include trams and walkways through elephant habitat or locating viewing hides where elephants gather at water holes or shade trees. Zoos could also deploy the same technology used routinely in (for example) stadium concerts, such as CCTV and large format monitors, to give up-close and personal views.

The N.C. Zoo also contends that providing space for elephants on the scale appropriate to their great size is too expensive, and small enclosures must suffice. This is true in most urban zoos because land prices, rents and taxes are very high in cities. But the N.C. Zoo is in a rural area where it is possible to have the wide-open spaces elephants really need. If the zoo cannot afford to give elephants this kind of environment, then the humane option is not to shrug and accept the trade-off in living standards, but to ask whether it is right to keep them at all.

Zoos say they want to continue keeping elephants in the current unacceptable conditions for another 10-15 years, while they do their own research into welfare standards. But surely we know enough already: Elephants are clearly evolved for walking, a lot of walking. When they have good, rich environments to move around in, on the order of square miles, not acres, they are healthy and happy. When they are confined to a few sterile acres or less, they inevitably suffer.

It is time for zoo officials to step outside their closed world and acknowledge the abundant evidence from field studies and sanctuary experience that shows the key to well-being in elephants is the room to move.

Keith Lindsay is a Canadian conservation biologist and environmental consultant now based in Oxford, with more than 30 years' experience in biodiversity research and conservation, natural resource sustainability and social development in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean and Canada.

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Doug

November 5, 2009 - 3:05 pm EST

Dr. David Jones, director of the N.C. Zoo, sent the following response (via Doug Clark):

Dr. Keith Lindsay (News & Record, Oct. 25) misses a key point that whether we are working with elephants in the wild or when elephants are closely managed in good zoos, all those involved are passionately concerned with these animals’ welfare.

As far as I am aware, Lindsay has never visited the North Carolina Zoo and, presumably therefore, his comments about it are based purely on hearsay. If he had visited, he would very quickly see that our elephants indeed have access to shady trees, pools to bathe in, grass and bushes in their surroundings, and sand and mud to play with, as he advocates. They are active, healthy and have no chronic foot problems.

We somehow imagine that being wild equates with good welfare. Not so. Animals evolve to compete successfully in the multi-million-year saga for survival, but evolution does not guarantee them high standards of welfare. Amboseli National Park, for example, which Lindsay describes from his own experience, is wrestling with major issues where the elephant population is reaching the carrying capacity of the land. They face intense human pressure around the boundaries of the park. So serious questions arise as to whether to move elephants, kill elephants to keep the population numbers down, or put up with the inevitable human conflict when these animals start raiding farms. All of these issues have huge welfare implications for those animals (as well as for their human neighbors).

While I would totally agree that the old “norm” of maintaining elephants in small, sterile, concrete and steel-dominated enclosures is unacceptable today, the mainstream zoo world is working steadily toward a time when all the elephants it cares for have access to sufficient space and to the considerable variety of activities and stimuli necessary for the well-being of these remarkable mammals.

Simply because an animal is capable of walking long distances does not mean that it needs to do that for its health and welfare. It is unlikely that an elephant that walks 20 miles a day is any better off than one that walks five miles, which is about what our animals will cover as they move about. Elephants certainly search out places to bathe and wallow, look for shade and establish social contact, as well as moving about to find food and water. All those parameters can be provided in a really good zoo exhibit, which is well designed to cover those needs. Such designs must include sufficient space to incorporate a wide range of stimuli and experiences, but that does not imply using vast acreages.

We don’t really know what the science-based parameters are for the optimum welfare of elephants in zoos. Moves are ongoing on both sides of the Atlantic to establish a more scientific evaluation of elephant welfare needs, and those findings will be used to further improve elephant care and management.

Those that criticize the keeping of elephants in zoos frequently downplay the positive impact that seeing a real live elephant or, for that matter, any other species in a good zoo with well-kept and presented animals has, particularly on the young observer. Most of these critics have never stood at such exhibits listening to the interested and excited reactions of parents and children watching a 10-foot-tall, six-ton bull elephant only 40 feet away. As Lindsay “recommends,” the N.C. Zoo has an “immersion” walkway extending into the elephant exhibit and designed in a way that has the animals slightly above human eye level.

In my 40 years of zoo management, whether here in North Carolina, or when running London and Whipsnade zoos in the United Kingdom, I have listened to and talked to thousands of parents and children about what they are seeing. Their responses reflect the positive impact this experience has on their attitude toward animals and their interest in the natural world. Many of the world’s most prominent biologists, and I have met quite a few of them over the years, including some from Oxford, first became excited and engaged about the animal kingdom from their early visits to a good zoo.

Lindsay and I have had the privilege of observing wild elephants. Most people though will never be able to do that. High-definition television and splendid films like “Planet Earth” certainly fill the gaps in our knowledge of animals and help to create engagement with nature. I am convinced, though, with 50 million visitors having passed through the gates of zoos I have managed in my 40 years in the zoo world, that there is absolutely no substitute for seeing a spectacular species like the African elephant in life and close up.

The world’s major zoos and their elephants already contribute significantly toward our scientific understanding of these animals, and these zoos are frequent participants in their conservation in the wild.

Recent predictions are that the African elephant faces extinction across most of its original range. All those interested in the future of these charismatic mammals need to use their time, energy and resources to work together, not argue unproductively on the sidelines.

David M. Jones, D.V.M., is director of the N.C. Zoological Park.