Ethics Newsline®

DETROIT
In a landmark move, the Detroit Zoo last week announced that it would stop exhibiting elephants, saying that even its respected facilities were insufficient to meet the animals’ real needs.

While some smaller institutions have dropped their elephant displays in the past, those moves usually have come under pressure from animal-rights groups or regulators concerned about facilities or mistreatment.

Last week’s decision is different, marking the first time that a major U.S. zoo has decided that ethical considerations alone require it to abandon the display of elephants, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Detroit, whose one-acre elephant pen is about 16 times larger than required by regulations, said last week that its two Asian elephants, females Winky and Wanda, have been exhibiting health problems common among confined animals.

Such problems range from severe arthritis and foot problems caused by unnatural ground surfaces to psychological problems like aggressiveness from stress and neurotic rocking from extreme boredom.

“People’s traditional expectation of zoos is that they see lions and tigers and elephants,” zoo director Ron Kagan told the Free Press. “But it’s also their expectation that an animal has a good life.”

Saying Winky and Wanda deserve a better life than the zoo can offer, Kagan said the facility will send the elephants to one of two U.S. wildlife sanctuaries in the late summer or early fall.

Elephants “are the only animals at the zoo for which there is a great disparity between what they need and what we can provide,” he said.

“Ron Kagan has been in the forefront of behavioral enrichment for animals, and for him to make this decision is big,” Carol Buckley, cofounder of the Elephant Sanctuary, told the Free Press. “Their minds and bodies are designed to stay busy. When you put them in a sterile environment like a zoo, they can’t do that.”

While Detroit’s news — ending the facility’s 81-year-old tradition of exhibiting elephants — may hit zoo-goers hard, Kagan said he hopes the public will eventually support the zoo’s ethical stance.

“I wouldn’t expect the American public, which has been told for 100 years it’s okay to have elephants in captivity, to say ‘Oh, okay, we understand’ right away,” Kagan told the Free Press. “But we have an educational mission.”