I absolutely love animals: sometimes I feel that I’ve learned almost as much from animals as from human beings about how to live and conduct myself in the world. So a tip on the News page (thanks, WGIIA) about the recent passing of one of the three elephants at the Los Angeles Zoo has got me deeply saddened. Gita suffered from foot ailments, as apparently many captive elephants do. She’d undergone surgery earlier this year and was making what zookeepers believed was good progress toward recovery. But last Saturday they found her in her area lifeless, with her legs folded beneath her. She was 48 years old and had lived at the zoo since 1959.
The photo shows a priest from the Malibu Hindu Temple (lately of Britney Spears fame), Krishnama Samudrala Charyulu, giving prayers last Wednesday at a service for Gita (she was an Asian elephant) held at the entrance of the zoo. The service was the idea of activists who oppose keeping elephants in captivity and who have been waging a battle against the city of Los Angeles. Apparently Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa failed to veto a $50m improvement in the elephants’ lodgings. The activists believe elephants should be kept in wildlife sanctuaries, not zoos, which seems reasonable enough; so they actually exposed the expansion of the zoo exhibit on grounds that it would still be too small and that the city had more pressing needs for the money.
There seems to be some disagreement as to how the elephants are protected from foot ailments that stem from walking on hard surfaces. From the Los Angeles Times article:
But she also had become a symbol for impassioned animal rights activists who argued that her crippling problems were the result of treading on concrete surfaces in the zoo for years, and that she would never completely recover. (All the zoo’s elephants now pad around on soft dirt surfaces.)
And from the Last Chance for Animals press release:
It has become evident that the LA Zoo cannot provide the space, exercise or social enrichment needed to preserve the elephants’ health and well being. They are kept in woefully inadequate quarters and are forced to stand on hard surfaces such as concrete or hard-packed earth.
The organization says that only one elephant was on exhibit at the L.A. Zoo, while Gita and another were kept for two years in a “temporary” off-exhibit area with only one-tenth of an acre for the two of them. If so this is quite damning, as the Bronx Zoo in New York has three Asian elephants on two acres, and has decided to shut down the exhibit altogether once these elders pass away.
So why not support the $50 expansion which, according to LCA itself, will increase the elephant area to 3.5 acres? I understand the arguments against keeping elephants in zoos altogether, but zoos can be better or more poorly designed and run. Isn’t it somewhat inflexible to oppose the chance to improve the exhibit to state of the art standards, a process that a more accomodating activist group could even be invited to take part in?
Most of all, I go back to what I get from exposure to animals, which is perspective and a sense of peace. Many a time I’ve taken a personal “time out” at the zoo, just to be in the company of other species and get my head straight. So I see value in exposing people, especially children, to animals at close range. Taking animals away from city zoos and placing them in rural wildlife sanctuaries makes seeing them a much more complex and expensive project. It means that wealthier families will find it much easier to expose their children to animals, while poorer families — whose children often grow up in more precarious and violent settings, and can benefit from encounters will animals — will find it much more difficult. There’s something profoundly democratic in going to a city zoo and seeing the shared joy and wonder on the faces of children of all backgrounds. If we can really invest in giving zoos the space and resources to honor the animals’ needs, I think that is money well spent.
In the meantime, pour a little of your drink onto the ground in honor of Gita the pachyderm to help speed her in her transition to ancestry.
