Elephant Bios

Lulu (b. ~1966)

Born in approximately 1966, Lulu was only a 1-to-2-year-old baby when she was captured and taken from her mother and family in the wild in Africa. The tiny young elephant was shipped from Swaziland to San Francisco in 1968. 

Taken from the warm African climate, Lulu arrived in the cold/damp climate of San Francisco on April 1, 1968. She would spend the next 36 years of her life in a tiny, 1/4-acre Zoo lot with an elder elephant named Maybelle who had also been captured from the wild for the Zoo in 1962. 

Lulu was never able to graze on the plains of Africa, to roam for miles daily with her mother and aunties, or to have a family of her own. Instead, she languished in the San Francisco Zoo, in a severely inadequate environment that caused severe and chronic health problems for Lulu. Among Lulu's ailments are foot and joint problems, arthritis, colic, various other health problems and psychological stress and trauma. For many years, Lulu was on a steady diet of painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs that masked symptoms of her suffering from an unsuspecting public. 

The severe confinement in which Lulu and Maybelle were forced to live in for 36 years created tension as well -- Maybelle regularly pushed Lulu, causing her repeated physical harm. Despite this stressful situation, Zoo management refused to send the elephants to sanctuaries where they would have had access to the space necessary to develop good physical and psychological health. Board minutes from the December 1997 SF Zoological Society (SFZS), which was hired by the City to operate the Zoo, stated, "We are looking at an option to move the African elephants to the Disney Zoo in Orlando, Florida. This would be good for the animals, but would leave a hole in the visitor experience." 

Fortunately, before that was allowed to happen, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors stepped in to help the elephants by voting in May 2004 to send Lulu and Tinkerbelle to a sanctuary. The Board of Supervisors then passed a resolution in June 2004 requiring that any San Francisco Zoo elephant exhibit provide a minimum of 15 acres of space. This new standard greatly surpasses the amount of space given to elephants in any U.S. zoo, and effectively shut down the San Francisco Zoo’s elephant exhibit. As a result, Lulu left the Zoo in March 2005 for the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) sanctuary in the Sierra foothills of Northern California, where she still lives happily today.

Within weeks of her arrival, Lulu made friends with two of the sanctuary’s most beloved elephant residents, Mara and 71. While Lulu is noticeably smaller than her pachyderm pals, they have developed a strong bond and get along well. Lulu appears to be happy and content in her new life. Living out in the open and being in the care of the sanctuary’s veterinarians, Lulu is finally starting to heal after years of living in cramped zoo enclosures.