Tina bound for Tennessee
Wildlife: Ailing Asian elephant will have a new home in sanctuary

Glenn Bohn
Vancouver Sun

Tina the Asian elephant is moving to Tennessee after spending more than 30 years at the Greater Vancouver Zoo.

Zoo officials announced the decision Friday after a private, 90-minute meeting with a founder of The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, which is taking the 33-year-old Tina without any money changing hands.

Seven other Asian elephants already live at the only natural habitat refuge in the U.S. for sick and elderly elephants.

Because of a recent land purchase, the sanctuary will soon encompass almost 1,100 hectares -- a landscape of pasture, woodlands and spring-fed ponds almost three times as large as Stanley Park. In winter, the pachyderms can stay warm in a heated, elephant-sized barn.

Carol Buckley, the sanctuary's co-founder and executive director, said a legal agreement between the zoo and the sanctuary will make Tina a permanent resident of the sanctuary.

And Buckley expects Tina will quickly recover from the chronic foot problems that currently plague her.

"She could live 70 years and I have no reason to believe she won't," Buckley said in an interview.

Animals rights groups campaigning for better living conditions for Tina had planned to demonstrate today at the Aldergrove-area zoo, but now they're celebrating, not protesting.

After the zoo announced its acceptance of the sanctuary's offer to take Tina, representatives of Friends of Tina, Zoocheck Canada and the Vancouver Humane Society invited a zoo representative to join their previously planned news conference in Vancouver and popped the cork on a bottle of champagne.

Jamie Dorgan, the zoo's animal care manager, said the elephant's potential market value was not a factor in the zoo's decision to send Tina to Tennessee.

"The issue was never how much Tina was worth and how much we could get for her," Dorgan told journalists. "This was the best possible decision, as far as Tina's long-term health and well-being goes."

He also said sanctuary staff are more familiar with the kind of foot problems Tina has. And he said the animal will have far more space in Tennessee

"Overall, there are a lot of factors that make it a better home for Tina at this point in her life."

The sanctuary plans to transport Tina in a custom-built semi-trailer truck that was donated by United Parcel Services. The three-day highway trip will cost about $20,000 US. Once again, the sanctuary will pay the bill.

Jean Robillard, a Canadian Wildlife Service official in Ottawa who administers export and import permits for endangered species, said there should be no legal barriers that would prevent captive-born Tina from going to the U.S.

Buckley said she hopes Tina will be trucked to the sanctuary before the end of June, before the weather gets too hot.

Buckley said the elephant will probably recover from her foot condition in six months to a year. The foot problem is caused by the continual bruising of the elephant's nail against the cuticle, leading to an abscess that never heals -- a chronic foot problem that Buckley said occurs when elephants walk on a hard surface.

"We've brought in elephants to the sanctuary which had the exact same condition and the recovery time has been six months," she said.

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