Aucklanders urged to stop elephant plan
Aug 13, 2010
© Shannon Plummer
The zoo’s elephant plans took a step forward on 11 August when Auckland City Council’s Arts, Culture and Recreation Committee endorsed a proposal to increase the zoo boundary into Western Springs Lakeside Park.
Bridget Vercoe, WSPA New Zealand’s Country Manager, says she is extremely disappointed by the council’s decision.
“If Auckland Zoo is, as it’s mission states, serious about “providing visitors with experiences that inspire and empower positive action for wildlife” they should seriously reconsider establishing an elephant herd,” she says.
Elephants born and bred in zoos are never released into the wild. Any elephant born at Auckland Zoo will either live out is life at Auckland Zoo or be shipped at great expense and detriment to the animal’s welfare to another zoo either in New Zealand or overseas.
Bridget says elephants do not fare well in captivity. They suffer a range of health problems such as foot and leg problems, heart attacks, arthritis, herpes and tuberculosis.
In the wild, elephants roam large distances and spend a great deal of their waking hours walking in search of food. Studies have shown that at a minimum a family group of Asian elephants will travel 3.2 square kilometres in a day. The space provided in the Auckland Zoo proposal is a fraction of this recorded minimum.
They also live in complex family groups comprised of related females of varying ages and led by a matriarch.
The proposed herd for Auckland Zoo is a small, artificial grouping of unrelated captive-born elephants. There is the real possibility that the important elephants will not successfully socialise, requiring individual enclosures, she says.
A timeframe for importing the elephants and building the $13 million enclosure has yet to be determined.