You might wonder why the NhRP and the experts like me who support the NhRP’s lawsuits are attempting to get elephants released from zoos to sanctuaries. I was not always opposed to zoos. In fact, as a child I loved going to the zoo because I loved animals and I believed that by breeding endangered animals in captivity, zoos were helping to prevent their extinction. For a while I wanted to be a zookeeper myself. But the more I have learned about elephant behavior and conservation, the more I have become convinced that keeping elephants in zoos has dire consequences for their welfare and does nothing to help the conservation of wild elephants.
I do not doubt that zookeepers genuinely care about the elephants in their care. But that is beside the point. The reality is that despite the best of intentions, it simply isn’t possible for elephants’ needs to be met in a zoo environment. Elephants need space—a LOT of it. In the wild they typically walk several miles every day and have a home range of anywhere from several thousand to several hundred thousand acres. The average elephant exhibit in a North American zoo is less than two acres. Elephants in zoos frequently suffer from a host of physical ailments due to lack of exercise, including osteoarthritis, obesity, and gastrointestinal issues.
Zoo elephants also suffer psychological trauma from being confined to such a small space for their whole lives. They tend to have chronically elevated stress hormones which leads to brain dysregulation. This is manifested in the repetitive, stereotyped movements such as swaying and head-bobbing that are seen in many zoo elephants, but never in wild elephants. Elephants don’t just need space for physical exercise, they also need autonomy over their lives and they need to be able to choose with whom they interact and when. Just like humans, who often become antisocial and violent when locked up, elephants in captivity are far more aggressive to one another than elephants in the wild typically are. Mother elephants in zoos frequently kill their own calves, something that is simply unheard of in the wild.
Some elephants in zoos are even held alone. It is difficult to overstate how devastating this is for the welfare of animals who evolved to maintain vast, complex networks of social relationships.
While zoos tout their captive breeding programs as elephant “conservation,” the reality is that no elephant born in a North American zoo has ever been released into the wild. Zoos don’t breed elephants to conserve declining wild populations; they do it to maintain a permanently captive population for the purpose of making money.
Unlike zoos, sanctuaries are designed for the benefit of the animals themselves, rather than for the benefit of human visitors. They provide elephants with orders of magnitude more space than zoos are able to provide. They also provide them with a much healthier social environment. In several cases elephants who were aggressive and antisocial in zoos have transformed into calm and socially integrated individuals almost as soon as they arrived at a sanctuary.
Courts are already willing to grant legal rights to some nonhuman entities, such as rivers, forests, and corporations, but they are reluctant to do the same for nonhuman animals because of the ingrained belief that these animals are inferior to us and less deserving of moral consideration. But that belief is wrong. It is clear that elephants are autonomous individuals who deserve the right to liberty just as we do, and it is high time that we recognized this right under the law. So long as elephants lack legal rights, they will have no recourse to have their interests defended in court; they will continue to be exploited by humans for profit. This is why I support the NhRP’s work, and I encourage everyone who cares about elephants to support them too.
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