The Experts Speak

Affidavit from Dr. Daphne Sheldrick MBE MBS

1992 Unep Global 500 Laureate

I have been intimately involved with elephants for the past 50 years, both in a wild situation for 30 years in Kenya's Tsavo East National Park, and having hand-reared 62 infant orphaned calves, 9 of which are still in our Nairobi Nursery, 34 undergoing rehabilitation back into the wild community of Tsavo, and the rest now living wild and free having been successfully returned where they rightly belong.

I can categorically say that elephants should not be confined in captivity, no matter how attractive the facilities may appear to us humans. These are animals that mirror humans in terms of emotion, age progression and longevity, and above all, they need their family, their friends and s p a c e.

No artificial situation can give an elephant what it needs in terms of space, for l00 miles is a mere stroll for these animals, our l0 year old orphaned bull having covered that distance in just one day, in search of friends. Consider this - that life imprisonment is the most severe punishment we humans mete out to transgressors, and life imprisonment for an elephant is the same.

It frustrates inherent instinct, and the genetic memory with which elephants are endowed at birth, and turns them psychotic. The kindest thing any human can do for a captive elephant is to set it free, allow it access to the stimulation of others, and even though one cannot give it adequate space in elephant terms, at least give it a larger place to live out its life than life imprisonment in a Zoo.

I believe that we will live to see the day that keeping elephants in Zoos will be banned entirely.

It is cruel and unethical, and there is nothing educational in looking at a miserable captive in an unnatural setting. I would strongly support the closing down of the elephant exhibit at the San Francisco Zoo.

Dr. Daphne Sheldrick MBE MBS

The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust
P.O. Box 15555 Nairobi Kenya
Tel: 254 (0) 20 891 996
Fax: 254 (0) 20 890 053