Live hard, die young - how elephants suffer
in zoos On 23rd October the RSPCA published the fullest ever study into the welfare of elephants in zoos. The study, conducted by scientists at Oxford University shows elephants die young in European zoos, having suffered from deficient enclosures, poor diet, illness, inappropriate social grouping, and rough treatment at the hands of their keepers.
Adult elephants in European zoos have about half the 30-year lifespan of their counterparts working in Asian timber camps, when they could expect to reach 60-65 in the wild. Zoo breeding programmes also have an abysmal record - 35% of zoo females fail to breed, 15-25% of Asian zoo babies are stillborn, and another 6-18% are rejected or even killed by their mothers. Zoo enclosures can be 60 to 100 times smaller than the smallest wild territories - with 90% of those in Europe providing no grazing. For several years CAPS has investigated the keeping of elephants in zoos, and our major undercover investigation of elephant training at Blackpool Zoo was widely covered in the RSPCA report. We have for a long time criticised the training of elephants in zoos to perform circus-style tricks, and these tricks have also been condemned in this report.
The RSPCA report also demolishes the zoo industry argument that elephants need to be in captivity for 'conservation' purposes. The World Wide Fund for Nature and the African Elephant Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature do not think captive breeding contributes significantly to elephant conservation. The money spent on keeping elephants in zoos should instead be spent on protecting elephants in their natural habitat - in fact, the RSPCA concludes that keeping elephants in western zoos is 50 times more expensive than conserving them in the wild. The RSPCA calls for the immediate phase-out of elephants through ceasing importation and breeding programmes. CAPS supports this call. WHAT YOU CAN DO
Photographs © Captive Animals Protection Society |
