Los Angeles Zoo
Background
Like other urban zoos across the country, L.A. Zoo is unable to provide the vast acreage needed by elephants, who can walk tens of miles a day in the wild and have home ranges of 120 square miles or more. Yet L.A. Zoo is embarking on a 3.5-acre elephant exhibit expansion at a cost to taxpayers of $40 million. Even worse, this small amount of space is subdivided into four yards, and the planned barn can hold as many as 10 elephants (though the Zoo is expected to initially hold 5 to 6 elephants).
When voting to approve funding for the planned exhibit, the L.A. City Council ignored the Zoo’s poor track record with elephants. Thirteen elephants have died at L.A. Zoo and at least six more are unaccounted for (died or transferred). An elephant’s natural lifespan is 60 to 70 years, yet more than half of the Zoo’s elephants died before reaching age 20.
The most recent deaths include 39-year-old Tara, an African elephant who died in 2004. Keepers found her down on the ground one morning and unable to get up due to severe arthritis. She died shortly thereafter.
Similarly, keepers found 48-year-old Gita down one morning, and she died later that day. She, too, had suffered from advanced arthritis, as revealed in her necropsy (her body was riddled with the disease). IDA exposed the terrible failure of Zoo personnel to take action after observing Gita down early during the night prior to her death. It was later determined that Gita may have needlessly and painfully suffered for as long as 12 to 17 hours before getting veterinary attention. She had also suffered chronic foot infections throughout her life, which eventually led to the partial amputation of one toe in September 2005. IDA requested an USDA investigation into Tara and Gita’s deaths, the results of which are still pending.
Update
The 46-year-old African elephant Ruby made an historic journey in May 2006 from her tiny, off-exhibit enclosure at L.A. Zoo to her new home at the PAWS Sanctuary in Northern California, where she will live on more than 70 acres of rolling, grassy hills.
Now IDA’s attention turns to Billy, a 21-year-old male Asian elephant who is also living in isolation at the Zoo. Even though male elephants are considered more solitary than females, they do not live entirely alone. Free-ranging male elephants are known to associate in loose “bull groups” and also are in contact with matriarchal herds.
Billy has displayed intensely repetitive head bobbing for many years, an abnormal behavior that is unseen in free-ranging elephants. These behaviors are generally linked to poor welfare, including lack of space, stress, and boredom.
IDA continues to call for closure of the L.A. Zoo’s elephant exhibit and for Billy to be sent to a sanctuary.
Watch a video about Ruby’s plight.
Bios
Billy, Gita, and Ruby
What You Can Do
- Please write to L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa at mayor@lacity.org thanking him for his progressive position that elephants should be kept in sanctuaries, and ask that he reconsider spending millions of dollars of taxpayer money on an inadequate elephant exhibit at L.A. Zoo. Urge him to send Billy to a sanctuary and permanently close the Zoo’s elephant exhibit.
- If you are a Los Angeles resident, please write or call your City Council representative and express your strong opposition to spending millions of dollars of your taxpayer money on an inadequate elephant exhibit at L.A. Zoo. Urge him or her to help send Billy to a sanctuary and permanently close the Zoo’s elephant exhibit. Click here to locate your City Council member online, or call 311 from within city limits on any wired telephone line.
In Defense of Animals
415.388.9641
info@idausa.org
IDA Complaint to USDA on Death of Chimp After Rattlesnake Bite
IDA Complaint to USDA on Death of Tara
Excerpts from Los Angeles Zoo Medical Records for Gita Prior to her Death