Northwest Animal Rights
Network (NARN)
March 2016
Chai at Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo before being moved to Oklahoma...
The blood infection that killed Chai in Oklahoma City came after the
elephant lost 1,050 pounds in the short time since she’d left Seattle’s
Woodland Park Zoo, The Seattle Times learned from a public records request.
Chai was weighed only twice at the Oklahoma zoo, records show, although
she’d dropped from 8,150 pounds when she left Seattle on April 15 to 7,100
pounds when she died in January.
It’s not too late to get Bamboo to a sanctuary. On the advice of Nancy
Pennington and Alyne Fortgang, co-founders of the
Friends of
Woodland Park Zoo Elephants, please do these two things in Chai’s
memory:
1. Write an email to Mayor Murray and the Seattle City Council. Addresses to
cut and paste are below. Just one line will do!
[email protected], [email protected],[email protected],
[email protected] ,[email protected],
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected],
[email protected]
Then write AGAIN!
2. Sign this petition:
Chai Is Dead - Ask the Oklahoma city Zoo to Close Elephant Exhibit
An Oklahoma City zoo veterinarian said they relied on a visual scoring
system. “You couldn’t see her ribs, nothing that would indicate the degree
of fat loss that was going on,” Jennifer D’Agostino told Times reporter
Sandi Doughton. (Today’s paper also included the supposedly celebratory news
that the Woodland Park Zoo has named a baby gorilla it bred in captivity.
Her name is Yola.)
If a veterinarian couldn’t see Chai’s deterioration, it would be even harder
for a Woodland Park Zoo docent who visited Oklahama City and wrote that
Chai’s last days were “happy.”
Now we know they were horrific. Twice in the weeks before she died, Chai was
unable to stand up.
We also know from the records Doughton received that Bamboo, the other
Seattle elephant who was transferred to Oklahoma instead of to a sanctuary,
was distressed enough during one public performance that she knocked Chai
off her feet.
Thank you for everything you do for animals!
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