The San Diego Zoo has "disposed of" their existing African elephant stock since they are now too old to breed, to make room for the new wild ones.They have been sent to Lincoln Park Zoo in Illinois.

Here is the story from Peta:

The San Diego Zoo and Lowry Park Zoo have devised a despicable and cruel plan to capture and import 11 African elephants from their homeland.

The 12-year-old elephants are roaming freely with their families on the 74,130-acre Hlane Royal National Park in Swaziland. These elephants are among the babies who witnessed the horror of their families’ being slaughtered at Kruger National Park in South Africa in 1994. At the time, traumatized orphans were relocated to Hlane to live a life of freedom. Knowing elephant behavior, these elephants have likely integrated into a herd and have bonded very closely with their new family members. If the zoos have their way, these elephants will suffer another devastating loss and a lifelong prison sentence.

In a desperate attempt to make this crime against nature more palatable to the public, the zoos are claiming that they are importing these elephants because the park wants to kill them—despite the fact that PETA has offered to assist in translocating them to another free-roaming area in Africa if, in fact, they are facing death.

Link to letter writing protests: http://www.savewildelephants.com/4.html

Carol Buckley of the Tennessee Elephant Sanctuary, says that she and a group of other elephant advocates went to court to try and stop the Zoo from doing this. They lost.