http://www.elephants.com/media/chicago_tribune_5_3_05.htm

Zoo plans to study elephant well-being
May 3, 2005

By Jeremy Manier and William Mullen
Chicago Tribune staff reporters
Published May 3, 2005

Stung by criticism heaped on his institution after the death of a third elephant in the last six months, Lincoln Park Zoo president Kevin Bell on Monday said the zoo is committed to a long-term scientific study on whether it is harmful to keep the animals in cold-climate zoos.

A preliminary necropsy report on the death of Wankie, the female African elephant that was euthanized Sunday, will be out late this week, Bell said. A more complete analysis of her blood and tissue samples won't be available for weeks.

Bell said he invited the U.S. Department of Agriculture to open an investigation of Wankie's death, and he also asked for an independent audit of the zoo's elephant care by outside experts with the American Zoo and Aquarium Association.

"It's very dangerous to draw conclusions without knowing the facts," Bell said, acknowledging that the rapid succession of the elephants' deaths was a public relations nightmare for the zoo.

The zoo has been in the cross hairs of a national animal rights campaign since the first of its three resident elephants, 35-year-old Tatima, died Oct. 16 of a rare lung disease. That campaign intensified after Peaches, 55, died Jan. 17. Veterinarians put down the zoo's last elephant, Wankie, 35, shortly after a two-day transport by truck to the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City, where she was to have made a new home with lephants there.

"We don't know what the cause was yet, but it's not like there has been a plague going through our zoo," Bell said. Animal rights groups and some biologists want to remove all elephants from zoos in cold climates, saying indoor zoo spaces are too confining for large animals.

Some experts say the need to keep elephants indoors in cold weather limits their natural tendency to wander, which can lead to problems with arthritis, skin conditions and weight gain. Cynthia Moss, who has studied elephants in Kenya for more than 30 years and founded the Amboseli Trust for Elephants, said she believes there's no need for more than about a dozen zoos in the U.S. to house elephants.

"I question whether elephants can be kept in any northern zoos," Moss said.

Bell said his staff will join other institutions nationally to study the effects of climate on zoo elephants, as no definitive research has been done on the question.

"We need scientific analysis rather than conjecture," Bell said. "In fact, wild elephants live in all sorts of climates, including some places where it gets quite cold."

Moss agreed that cold weather in itself does not pose an insurmountable barrier to elephants. She noted that the natural habitat of African elephants extends from the deserts of Namibia to the slopes of Tanzania's Mt. Kilimanjaro, where temperatures dip below freezing at night.

Although Lincoln Park Zoo's 4,000-square-foot indoor facility is considered standard among zoos, such enclosures can't match conditions in the wild, where an elephant would walk 10 to 40 miles per day.

Animal rights groups have charged that concrete zoo floors can cause foot disease or exacerbate the arthritis that affects some captive animals. Those are the sorts of charges that new research can sort out, Bell said.

"To say that the fact that zoos cause a lot of damage and foot disease in elephants because they must spend a lot of time standing on hard concrete is pure speculation," Bell said.

The zoo on Monday would not make its elephant keepers available to reporters to talk about Wankie's death, saying that they were in a process of grief counseling. He said the elephants' deaths have been especially hard on the zoo staff.

"[Elephants] are such socially complex animals that they demand constant contact with keepers, who spend an awful lot of time tending to intimate care of and attention to things like their feet," said Dave Bernier, an assistant curator of the animal collection.

"When suddenly one of these animals disappears from the keepers' lives, it can be pretty hard to get over the loss."

Wankie was the last of an elephant trio whose close fellowship stretched back three decades. The three had lived together since 1976 at the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park, where they benefited from warm weather and a large elephant habitat.

Controversy surrounded the San Diego Zoo's decision in 2003 to bring in seven younger elephants from Swaziland in southern Africa and truck the three older elephants to Chicago. San Diego officials said the Swaziland elephants were at risk in their native country, where the park staff planned to kill part of the herd because of overcrowding.

But critics said that was a pretense for bringing in young animals that could breed and draw more visitors to the zoo. In contrast to the older elephants, all of the new elephants at San Diego are about 14 years old.

"They were just treating these elephants as so many commodities, to move around where they please without any thought as to what's good for the elephant," Moss said.

Moving the animals to Chicago's cold climate was especially harsh given their long residence in California, Moss said. "When elephants have adjusted and lived in a warm climate for 25 years or more, that makes it worse," she said.

The opportunity for new breeding stock did affect the decision to bring in the young elephants, said Douglas Myers, executive director of the Zoological Society of San Diego, which oversees the zoo and the wild animal park.

After the deaths of Peaches and Tatima, Myers issued a statement accusing critics of "using their deaths to promote their agenda against zoos."

But Moss said she thinks elephants still have a place in zoos. Moss said she would like to see better standards for elephant care--and that would mean fewer zoos could house elephants.

"I honestly don't think every city in America needs a zoo with an elephant in it," Moss said.