Woodland Park Zoo Scolded By Friends of Elephants

Friends of Woodland Park Zoo Elephants have been working to secure the release of Watoto (the lone African elephant), Chai, and Bamboo from Woodland Park Zoo (WPZ) to the 2,700 Elephant Sanctuary.

Keeping the planet's largest land mammal in WPZ's tiny barn room up to 17 hours a day and in a section of a one acre yard is blatantly inhumane. Whether looking for food or energized by food, elephants are born with bodies that need to walk great distances for their mental and physical health. Experts have presented decades of research that bears this out.

Since 2000, half of the 63 elephants that have died in AZA accredited zoos never reached the age of 40. The natural lifespan of elephants is 60 - 70 years. It is the zoo environment that is killing them prematurely just as poachers and loss of habitat are doing in the wild - it is the same crime with the same result.

The zoo claims displaying elephants makes people care about them and then they will donate to conserve them. If this were true, Asian elephants wouldn't be as endangered today since people have been seeing them in zoos for more than 200 years. As zoos have adopted their "conservation" ethic to justify incarcerating elephants, numbers have continued to decline.

Conservation of elephants needs to take place in the wild - the ONLY place they should be - not in a "cage" with Olmsted landscaping – to which they have no access.

Elephants in captivity all over the world are paying with their health and their lives to satisfy people’s desire to see them up close. Keeping these social and complex animals in zoos is a profound injustice. These animals should be roaming over vast distances in extended family units, raising young, and playing in water.

Instead, they are reduced to entertaining the kiddies and satisfying humankind’s selfish sense of entitlement.

That is very sad...I had no idea Elephants could get herpes

If a zoo refuses to even acknowledge that elephants, the largest land mammal, need a lot of space, then they are not, contrary to their claims, showing leadership in conservation and education. On the contrary, though Woodland Park Zoo is an attractive zoo to stroll through from the zoo visitors' perspective, their refusal to recognize what elephants need to thrive shows that the zoo remains firmly entrenched in an outdated, 19th century menagerie model of keeping and displaying elephants. This is most of all unfortunate for the animals who continue to suffer and die prematurely from captivity-induced ailments and from a tragically failed breeding program with an alarmingly high death rate.

It is more than cosmetic appearance that makes a world-class zoo. It is also a forward-thinking, progressive philosophy that promotes the best interest of the animals under their care. I'm afraid from that perspective, Woodland Park Zoo has earned its place on this "10 Worst Zoos for Elephants" list.