AAS web page we built for Tina: Link at end of this post.

Zoo backtracks after outcry over ailing Tina's
fate. Elephant won't be sent to Ontario if concerns about treatment are valid: manager

Nicholas Read
Vancouver Sun

Thursday, May 29, 2003

Tina, who suffers from chronic foot problems, could be moved to Tennessee.

Greater Vancouver Zoo general manager John Lee said Wednesday he won't send Tina, the zoo's ailing Asian elephant, to an Ontario zoo if concerns raised about her possible treatment there are true.

The zoo's announcement Tuesday that it planned to send Tina to the Bowmanville Zoo, a facility 64 kilometres east of Toronto, provoked an outcry from animal welfare groups who charged that the zoo's co-owner and director, Michael Hackenberger, strikes his animals and uses other forms of deprivation to train them.

But Lee said Wednesday the Vancouver zoo is in a position to change its mind "at any time" if such claims are true because no written commitments have been made to send her to Ontario.

Referring to the concerns reported in The Vancouver Sun Wednesday, Lee said: "If any of that is true, I will change my mind."

He said the zoo has been deluged with complaints from the public ever since it announced its decision to move Tina to Ontario, and it is concerned about that.

Jamie Dorgan, the Greater Vancouver Zoo's animal-care manager, said Tuesday he had received assurances from Bowmanville's Hackenberger that Tina would not be used for entertainment purposes.

But Hackenberger said in a telephone interview Wednesday that Tina would be used for entertainment rides and in "educational" shows in the zoo's amphitheatre.

Lee said if that's true, he would change his mind about sending Tina there.

"I don't have the full details. If those factors are true, I will change my mind," Lee said. "It was not reported to me like that."

Animal welfare groups want 33-year-old Tina, who suffers from chronic foot problems and isolation, to go to the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tenn., a 1,200-hectare facility that takes nothing but female Asian elephants. Sanctuary director Carol Buckley wants her moved there as well.

Buckley, who used to work at the Bowmanville Zoo herself, said the Greater Vancouver Zoo has good reason to be concerned about what use Tina will be put to in Bowmanville and about the training methods used there. She also promised that Tina would not be used for any entertainment purposes in Tennessee.

John Youngman, a board member of the Winnipeg Humane Society, told The Sun on Wednesday that on a visit to Winnipeg in 2000, Hackenberger told him and other board members that he used "adversive" training methods on his animals.

Youngman also said that Hackenberger said those methods include hitting them.

In Wednesday's phone interview, Hackenberger said he has been training elephants for 20 years and that when he was younger "and didn't know better," he would hit them. Now he says he strikes them only when necessary, particularly when one is acting aggressively to a human or another elephant.

In 2002, the humane society issued a press release stating that after a Bowmanville elephant named Limba was alleged to have attacked a keeper at the Assiniboine Park Zoo, Hackenberger flew to Winnipeg, where he purchased a whip and an electric prod to beat her in reprisal.

Youngman said Hackenberger threatened to sue the society over the allegation, but that it never heard from him again.

Hackenberger denied ever striking the elephant, and said he bought the prod in Winnipeg because it was more effective for use at his zoo than any prods he could buy in Ontario. He also said the whip was a buggy whip commonly used by horse riders.

Also of concern to animal-welfare groups is Bowmanville's practice of housing Asian elephants with African elephants.

Mike Keele, assistant director of the Oregon Zoo, where Tina was born, said African elephants can harbour a herpes virus that is potentially lethal to Asian elephants.

While African animals display no symptoms of the virus, Asian animals, if they contract it, usually die from it.

Asked how much money an elephant like Tina could fetch on the open market, Keele guessed at anywhere between $30,000 US and $70,000 US.

Hackenberger said it could fetch more than that, but he was not paying Vancouver anything for Tina. He also said that if things didn't work out for her in Bowmanville, he and Greater Vancouver Zoo officials would move her.

Dorgan said the decision to send Tina to Ontario was made because of concerns about how long it would take to send her to Tennessee. He said gathering the necessary permits could take up to six months or longer.

But the Canadian office of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species, the agency responsible for issuing the permit, says it would take six weeks.

Buckley said that once the permit is in hand, "we could drive up and get her in two days."

She said the Greater Vancouver Zoo made several calls to her about Tina Wednesday, and she will be in Aldergrove Friday to discuss transfer time and other issues with Lee and Dorgan.

She also said that because of the enormous public outcry against moving Tina to Ontario, she is hopeful the zoo will change its mind.

"When all this is said and done, and Tina is trucked across the border, everyone can be proud of themselves for standing up and speaking out for her. That's what will make the difference."

© Copyright 2003 Vancouver Sun