St. Louis Zoo

Background

The St. Louis Zoo currently exhibits five female Asian Elephants (Sri, Ellie, Rani, Donna and Pearl), as well as one female calf (Maliha – daughter of Ellie) and a male Asian Elephant (Raja) in a 1.2 acre exhibit dubbed the River’s Edge.

While the elephants are allowed outdoors in warm weather, they are confined to small concrete-floored barn stalls for extended periods of time, especially in winter when freezing temperatures force them to remain indoors for days on end.

The outdoor exhibit is divided into three lots, the largest of which is a half-acre. In contrast, elephants living in the wild typically travel up to 30 miles a day. Given that there are 640 acres in a single square mile, it’s no wonder that with seven elephants sharing such a small amount of space and spending so much of their lives standing still on concrete, six of them suffer from lameness, joint problems, chronic foot abscesses, arthritis, infections, cracked skin and nail problems.

Citing these inadequate conditions, IDA submitted a petition to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) charging the St. Louis Zoo with violating the federal Animal Welfare Act, which mandates that zoos provide elephants with adequate space and conditions conducive to their well-being. IDA based the complaint on St. Louis Zoo medical records obtained through the Missouri Public Records Law.

As Les Schobert, former General Curator of the Los Angeles and North Carolina Zoos and a consultant to IDA on elephant issues, points out, "Conditions at the St. Louis Zoo do not come close to meeting the vast spatial and social needs of elephants, who live in extended family groups and can walk tens of miles a day in the wild. The many painful, captivity-induced health problems afflicting elephants in St. Louis are clear evidence that the Zoo is failing to meet the requirements set forth under federal law."

St. Louis Zoo’s acting animal collections director Bill Houston blames the elephants' various health problems on age rather than lack of movement and hard ground surfaces. However, the fact that even the Zoo’s young elephants, 9-year-old Rani and 13-year-old Raja, suffer from the beginning stages of foot disease renders Houston’s claim groundless. In addition, Rani has suffered from intermittent lameness since she was five. Elephants in the wild who are the same ages as those at the St. Louis Zoo rarely suffer from the kinds of disorders commonly seen in almost all captive elephants. Wild elephants maintain health by getting about 18 hours of exercise every day, almost constantly walking over a varied terrain of soft grasses, sand and dirt.

An autopsy report for a 32-year-old elephant named Carolyn who died prematurely at the St. Louis Zoo in 2000 revealed that she also suffered from arthritis and foot problems. IDA is concerned that the remaining seven elephants at the Zoo may suffer a similar fate if nothing is done to improve their living conditions. Therefore, by petitioning the USDA, IDA urged the agency to immediately inspect the St. Louis Zoo and enforce regulations for adequate space and housing conditions. IDA hopes that the USDA will compel the Zoo to either drastically increase space and improve conditions for their elephants or move them to a sanctuary with the space and environment suitable to meet the vast spatial and social needs of this species.

Captive Breeding

In 1999, the St. Louis Zoo spent $6.6 million on a new elephant exhibit and management facility specifically to acquire more elephants and start a captive breeding program. Since then, the Zoo's resident male elephant Raja has impregnated three of the females through planned pairings. Ellie, who is 34-years-old, gave birth to a female calf named Maliha in on August 2, 2006. The baby was taken off display a month and a half later, after she failed to gain weight. (After force-feeding the baby formula and giving her mother a hormone to boost milk production, the zoo now reports that the calf is doing better.) Meanwhile, Ellie’s other daughter Rani, who was impregnated at the too-young age of 8, is due to give birth around February 2007.

The high failure rate of captive elephant breeding in zoos has also touched the St. Louis Zoo, when 25-year-old Sri's pregnancy tragically ended in in November 2005.

Sri carried her calf, a girl, for a full 22-month pregnancy, but the baby died in her mother's womb before Sri went into labor. To date, Sri has not expelled the fetus. Similar situations have claimed the lives of three female elephants in recent years. Failure to expel the fetus can cause an elephant to develop a massive, systemic and fatal infection.

Despite the death of Sri’s calf and the threats that captive pregnancy and childbirth pose to her own health, the St. Louis Zoo plans to breed her again. Like all zoos participating in the American Zoo and Aquarium Association’s (AZA)’s captive breeding project, St. Louis Zoo officials claim that elephants must be propagated in zoos in order to ensure their survival in the wild. Yet captive breeding serves no conservation purpose, given that none of the elephants born in zoos will ever be reintroduced into the wild. And wild elephants are not threatened by inability to breed but rather by loss of habitat and illegal poaching: two critical problems that zoos do not address by spending large amounts of money to keep elephants in captivity.

In this way, zoos treat elephants as mere ornaments in a menagerie, bred primarily as a way to bring in visitors – and money. Bill Houston, the St. Louis Zoo’s acting animal collections director, makes this quite clear when he calls the Zoo’s elephant exhibit "hugely popular," noting that Raja’s birth in 1993 drew 100,000 visitors. But whether or not elephant exhibits are popular is completely irrelevant to the real issue: the elephants’ health, welfare and happiness. If the St. Louis Zoo really wanted to do what is best for these elephants, they would stop breeding them and send them to a sanctuary where they would experience an exceptionally better quality of life than they have now.

What You Can Do

A group of concerned citizens who want to help the elephants at the St. Louis Zoo is currently forming, so if you live in the area and want to get involved, please contact zoos@idausa.org or visit www.clarasvoice.org for more information.

Please "take action" and write to Mayor Francis Slay and ask him to act to help the elephants at St. Louis Zoo (the Zoo is supported by city and county taxpayer funds).

Summary of Medical Records

Addendum to IDA Citizen Petition and Report of Conditions, 3/16/2005

Pregnant elephant loses her baby, 11/19/2005

View Medical Records