What happens to elephants in Auckland ?

Animal rights activists have made a strong protest regarding plans to send a baby elephant to New Zealand’s Auckland Zoo. According to a news report, “the attorney general on July 13 undertook the maintain the status quo till August 2 till the determination of the writ petition filed against the bid to gift baby elephant ‘Nandi’ to New Zealand.”   

The petitioners cite the case of Kashin, the Thai elephant which died in 2009 from chronic health conditions after living at the Auckland Zoo for 36 years. They claim that the zoo has a bad track record regarding its elephants.   

Kashin arrived in Auckland in 1971 as a four-year-old. Zoo veterinarian Dr. Jacob-Hoff said at the time that Kashin already had pigeon-toed feet when she arrived, predisposing her to foot conditions.   

“Kashin has had foot issues and arthritis for well over 20 years and needed ongoing care to manage these. She’s done unbelievably well and remained a remarkably active and happy animal. But arthritis is a degenerative and incurable condition, and an elephant with arthritis is going to get worse a lot quicker than a human would do. You also have to consider that at 3.5 tonnes, although a good weight for Kashin, her joints and her feet were under huge pressure,” Dr. Jacob-Hoff said.   

Apart from chronic arthritis, she suffered from foot abscesses and skin infections which caused a breakdown in her immune system, hence the decision to ehuthanase her in 2009. The zoo closed for a day when she died, and more than 18,000 people came to bid her farewell.   

That left the zoo with just one elephant, the 26-year-old Burma, until Sri Lankan elephant Anjalee arrived at the zoo in 2015. Anjalee was born at the Pinnawala elephant orphanage in 2006.   
The zoo’s team leader Andrew Coers worked closely with Anjalee for nine months (including time spent with her at Pinnawala) before taking charge, described her as having an inner security and independence that helped immensely for her new life in Auckland.   

In fact, there is no evidence to suggest that the zoo is incompetent or negligent in caring for elephants. Elephants used to warm climates would certainly dislike colder weather, but Asian elephants are highly adaptable. One should not forget that we had a hill country elephant population slaughtered by the British in the 19th century to make way for roads and plantations. Maj. Forbes alone killed 5000 elephants before he was struck by lightning, or the tally would have been much higher.   

Auckland Zoo is spending 3.2 million US dollars on a project to start its own elephant herd. It is hardly likely to let its elephants die from negligence.   

While the decision to export elephants from their habitats of birth to locations abroad is controversial and needs to be carefully considered, we should consider too, just how safe our elephants, young and adult, are in the wild.   

Despite claims by every minister of wild life that our elephants are doing well in the wild, regular press reports suggest otherwise. Just last week, a baby elephant died by falling into a pit. Help from the Wild Life department arrived too late.   

The department has only four veterinarians, and obtaining transport and fuel is a bureaucratic process hamstrung by delays. While no one will deny the dedication and hard work of those involved, it’s a glaring fact that the resources they have are woefully inadequate given the magnitude of the problem.  The Pinnawala orphanage is crowded and needs more resources. In the wild, our elephants face heavy odds of survival, under threat from farmers, poachers and even express trains.   

Captivity naturally causes problems, including psychological ones, which an elephant would not have in the wild. But ‘wild and free’ is an increasingly hard ideal to achieve when humans take up so much space. Agriculture, deforestation (legal or illegal), development projects such as roads and dams, and poaching – all this means that the wild elephant is no longer free. Freedom comes with huge risks. Anjalee’s mother was a badly injured orphan and would have certainly died in the wild if she had not been cared for at Pinnawala.   

Thinking about it, wild life activists and organisations can petition against the government for squandering so much resources while allocating so little for wild life conservation. While the government spends royal sums of tax payer’s hard-earned money on luxury vehicles for politicians and top bureaucrats, just a couple of extra Land Cruisers would do wonders for wild life and save many more elephants and other animals in distress. But the money is not there. Instead, hundreds of more expensive four-wheel drive vehicles are given to various ministerial security divisions to burn rubber on our highways and cause accidents. This is certainly something to petition about.   

Again, a petition about the pathetic condition of the Dehiwela Zoo would be quite timely. If we are so concerned about sending our elephants abroad, is it justifiable to import foreign animals to a sub-standard, under-resourced and antiquated zoo with skinny lions and clinically depressed chimpanzees?