Nominate Your Local Zoo for IDA’s Ten Worst Zoos

Do the elephants at your local zoo bob and sway unnaturally? Do they spend their lives on concrete and hard surfaces? Are they kept in a wee enclosure better suited for a bathroom than an elephant exhibit? Has your zoo had a spate of elephant deaths related to their captive environment? Does your zoo have a solitary elephant? If you can answer yes to any of these questions, your zoo is eligible for IDA’s Ten Worst Zoos for Elephants in 2005 list. 

Elephants are highly complex, social animals. In the wild, they live in extended family groups. They form lifelong bonds and females stay with their mothers, aunts, sisters and other female relatives for their entire lives. Males stay with their mothers for up to fifteen years. These intelligent animals can travel more than thirty miles a day, which is necessary for good foot and joint health. 

Today’s zoos are unable to meet the physical, psychological and social needs of elephants. Forced to stand for long periods on hard, compacted soil and concrete is causing elephants in zoos to die at a fraction of their natural lifespan. In the last year alone ten elephants have died in U.S. Zoos. Of those, seven were under age forty. Elephants in the wild can live to be seventy years or older. According to the AZA, elephants in U.S. zoos die on average at thirty-four years old.

If you would like to see changes made to improve the elephant exhibit at your local zoo, or the zoo’s elephant exhibit permanently closed and the elephants sent to a sanctuary, let us know why.

Visit http://www.helpelephants.com/10_worst.html to see IDA’s Ten Worst Zoos for Elephants in 2004 list.