http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/29/AR2005052900956.html

Illinois Elephants' Fate Remains Uncertain
Battle Over 'Hawthorn Herd' Pits Circus World Against Animal Rights Backers

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 30, 2005; Page A06

More than two years ago, federal officials concluded that 16 elephants owned by an Illinois circus-animal training business were being mistreated and had to be removed quickly. Facing the possible loss of his license to keep circus animals, the owner of Hawthorn Corp. formally agreed last year to give up his elephants as soon as a new home could be found.

Fourteen months after that unprecedented agreement, however, most of the animals remain in an enclosed barn in rural Illinois, their future still very much undecided. Animal rights activists are outraged by the delay, the circus owner has been fighting the order in an administrative-law court, and the Agriculture Department faces criticism from all sides for its handling of the emotionally charged issue.

And now it looks as if some of the animals will end up at another facility created by a circus and not -- as earlier believed -- at an animal sanctuary. The result is an increasingly bitter dispute about the "Hawthorn herd," and more generally about how well, or how poorly, the world's largest land animal is being treated in its North American diaspora.

The current battle is between circus owners, who see the animals as potentially valuable breeding stock, and the Elephant Sanctuary, a 2,700-acre preserve in Hohenwald, Tenn., that allows generally older and sick female elephants from zoos and circuses to live out their days largely undisturbed by people.

Hawthorn Corp. and Elephant Sanctuary officials nearly agreed earlier this year that all the elephants except one male would go to Tennessee, but the discussions broke down over issues including when the sanctuary could receive the animals and whether Hawthorn would contribute to their upkeep.

Eager to have the Hawthorn issue settled, the USDA recently concluded that another circus owner from Oklahoma was qualified to receive three of the younger female elephants. Hawthorn owner John Cuneo said that he will send the animals to Oklahoma as soon as he gets permission in writing, and that he plans to send another young female and young male in the near future.

But the prospect of having mistreated elephants "freed" from the Hawthorn circus only to have them placed in another facility associated with a circus has inflamed animal rights advocates, and they have begun an aggressive campaign to convince elected officials and the public that all the animals should go to the verdant fields of Tennessee instead.

"We raised $2.5 million for a new barn so we could take the Hawthorn elephants," said Carol Buckley, executive director of the Elephant Sanctuary. "Now we're told that three or five of them are going somewhere else, and this is just terrible. Elephants are very social, and this herd -- after all its been through -- very much needs to be kept together."

The organization now in line to receive three of the elephants is the Endangered Ark Foundation in Hugo, Okla., which is run by the owners of the Carson & Barnes Circus. The choice is especially troubling to animal rights groups. The circus has been cited for several federal animal welfare violations and was the subject of an undercover sting by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which videotaped a company trainer using a bull hook and an electric prod with the elephants in what the group considered an aggressive way.

But Endangered Ark chief executive Barbara Byrd said her facility is ready and able to care for three to five of the Hawthorn elephants and has every intention of doing so. She said she received a request from Cuneo, the Hawthorn president, more than a year ago to take some of the elephants, and now she has been approved by USDA to receive them.

"Our family has lived with elephants for years and years, and we don't agree to take in these three lightly," she said. "We love these animals."

Byrd said she hopes the three adult elephants will be able to reproduce but she does not know whether that will be possible. The adults would remain forever at the Hugo facility, she said, but any elephant babies would be trained to join the "working herd" of the Carson & Barnes Circus.

The fate of the Hawthorn elephants, ages 25 to 52, is complicated by the fact that two of them tested positive for tuberculosis several years ago, and the others are all at some risk as a result. Largely because of the tuberculosis, the animals were not considered appropriate for zoos, and the March 2004 consent decree with Cuneo says that the Hawthorn animals cannot be returned to circus life.

Nonetheless, Cuneo worked hard to have the elephants placed with other circus owners and not with the Elephant Sanctuary or another similar large animal preserve in California. Both of those organizations have been highly critical of the way that circuses and zoos treat their elephants and are, Cuneo said, associated with animal rights activists whom he dislikes. Still, by November, Cuneo had sent three of the sicker elephants to the Tennessee sanctuary -- one of them died of tuberculosis three months after arriving -- but then negotiations stalled for the others.

Arguing that the government was forcing him to send the animals to a sanctuary against his will, Cuneo had earlier sought to overturn the consent decree. An administrative law judge extended the August 2004 moving date for the animals and, Cuneo said, suggested that the government be more open to other destinations. The Endangered Ark Foundation, which Cuneo described as a top elephant breeding facility, was approved earlier this year.

Jim Rogers, spokesman for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), defended the decision last week, saying that the Carson & Barnes facility meets all the agency's requirements. That Carson & Barnes is a circus, and that the herd would be broken up, are secondary issues.

"APHIS wants to see the animals relocated from the Hawthorn facility as soon as possible," he said. "It would be nice to see the animals accepted somewhere as a herd, but it is certainly not required."

For Buckley of the Elephant Sanctuary, the government's new position is deeply disappointing and very confusing. The new sanctuary barn will be ready in September, she said, and the state of Tennessee has forbidden her to receive them before then. What is more, she had hoped that recent decisions by the Detroit and San Francisco zoos to send their elephants to sanctuaries, rather than keep them in captivity, would help convince APHIS that the Hawthorn elephants deserved a similar future.

"We've made it clear to APHIS that we'll take the animals as soon as we possibly can, and that's only three months away," she said. "Shouldn't the government be looking to give these mistreated animals the very best home possible?"