Actress and animal-rights activist Lily Tomlin is joining the effort by Friends

Actress and animal-rights activist Lily Tomlin is joining the effort by Friends of Woodland Park Zoo Elephants to free Watoto, Chai and Bamboo. Tomlin is set to appear at a Monday press conference here to urge the zoo to release the three elephants to the 2,700 acre Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee.The Friends organization says elephants at Woodland Park Zoo are held in small, barren barn rooms up to 17 hours a day for about seven months out of the year, while free-ranging elephants are active 20 hours a day (WPZ has been ranked the 7th-worst for elephants). The Friends are also concerned about the zoo’s breeding program after its 29-year-old artificially inseminated elephant Chai miscarried last year. The group had warned the zoo Chia could miscarriage because of a herpes epidemic among captive elephants.