Stolen Swaziland Elephants Begin Life Sentences in Three U.S. Zoos
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

In Defense of Animals (ADI)
March 2016

These 17 elephants, captured for three U.S. zoos under the guise of “saving” them, have begun serving their life sentences at the Dallas Zoo, Sedgwick County Zoo in Kansas and Henry Doorly Zoo in Nebraska for what will be the remainder of their lives

For every elephant born in a zoo, another two die. Elephants in captivity will never be returned to the wild. For every elephant enduring life in a zoo, the physical and psychological traumas are chronic and devastating. Yet tickets are still being sold. Elephants in captivity often barely survive, let alone thrive. Breeding programs continue to fail, and captive born elephants continue to die young.

Swaziland’s “Stolen 18” elephants are now 17, due to the death in December of one of the male bulls, apparently kept secret from the public. These 17 elephants, captured for three U.S. zoos under the guise of “saving” them, have begun serving their life sentences at the Dallas Zoo, Sedgwick County Zoo in Kansas and Henry Doorly Zoo in Nebraska for what will be the remainder of their lives. If the zoos have it their way, the unborn children of these elephants, and their children to come, will be the zoo’s “property” until untimely, captivity-related deaths do they part. In 2003, 11 African elephants were imported to the U.S. from Swaziland to repopulate some U.S. zoos, though many bold efforts were made to stop it. Given how much more is currently understood about the complex needs, and rich social, emotional worlds of elephants, this move, in 2016, is exponentially abhorrent.

From the very beginning, the three zoos constructed this wild elephant abduction as a rescue mission, positioning themselves as conservation heroes, to save the elephants from otherwise being ‘culled’ to make room for endangered rhinos during drought and conditions that include dwindling food sources. Relocation options in Africa existed, but were never even considered.

In October of 2015, In Defense of Animals’ elephant scientist Dr. Toni Frohoff joined with seventy-five other international elephant experts and scientists to oppose this conservation con, call out the zoos’ lies, and implore the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) to DENY the importation permit, and leave the African elephants in Africa where they belong.

Despite international efforts to protect these elephants from the zoo’s abduction, tragically, the import permit was granted by USFWS in January. In February, Friends of Animals, with the support of the Elephant Specialist Advisory Group, filed a lawsuit against the USFWS for granting the permit, claiming that the US Government failed to conduct a National Environmental Policy Act analysis to examine the impact that live capture, export, relocation, and lifelong zoo confinement would have on the emotional, physical and psychological well being of the elephants.

A court hearing was scheduled for March 17, to give the elephants a legal voice. Their rights, as intelligent, sentient beings would have been represented. But on March 5, the court hearing was sabotaged by the zoos. They sedated the elephants, shut them in shipping containers, and loaded them onto a Boeing 747 cargo plane, bound for their long, sad future of incarceration.

The Conservation Con

For every elephant born in a zoo, another two die. Elephants in captivity will never be returned to the wild. For every elephant enduring life in a zoo, the physical and psychological traumas are chronic and devastating. Yet tickets are still being sold. Elephants in captivity often barely survive, let alone thrive. Breeding programs continue to fail, and captive born elephants continue to die young.

The last, desperate strategy for zoos to populate their elephant exhibits and boost ticket sales, is to steal young elephants from the wild, and use them as breeding factories. Putting the public under the “spell” that zoos are a source of elephant conservation, is a strategy that puts free-ranging elephant families and entire cultures in Zimbabwe, Swaziland and other nations at great risk of being torn apart and removed from their homeland. Wild elephants will continue to be vulnerable to the human predation of captive exploitation and will continue to be pawned off for profit to the U.S., China, and any and all buyers, as long as people support zoos. Elephant captivity marketed and sold as conservation is a flat out lie.

We will not forget these elephants. They need your support. Please stay tuned as IDA shares effective actions to help these imprisoned elephants, and stop this tragedy from ever happening again.

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