Taronga, Melbourne and Wellington Zoos plan to import nine Asiatic elephants from Thailand and put these animals on display. This is a very problematic decision as only elephants that have been domesticated are imported, and the so-called domestication process involves torturing the young animals.

As a Greens MP, I work closely with a number of animal welfare groups. Recently, I was supplied with a video depicting young elephants being subjected to a range of barbaric acts. The video shows a number of baby elephants, bound at the feet and locked in tiny cages, being beaten repeatedly with blunt and sharp objects. A number of men are seen stabbing spikes into the elephants around their ears.

I have been informed these repeated and extremely cruel acts are designed to break the spirit of these young animals.  They are cowered into behaviour patterns that will not be threatening to humans when the elephants become fully grown.

It is only these so-called domesticated elephants that are imported into zoos.

The Greens were told the three zoos claim the importation of fully grown and baby elephants from Thailand is necessary for their planned elephant breeding program.

However, information received under a freedom of information request reveals the main motivation of the zoo management for pushing ahead with the import plan is to boost the number of visitors to Taronga Zoo.

Moreover, the breeding program argument does not hold up, as elephants have never been bred successfully in captivity in Australia.

Saving this endangered species should certainly be a priority. The best way Australia and our zoos could play a part is by funding some of the excellent elephant conservation programs operating in Thailand. Research undertaken by the RSPCA in Britain estimated keeping elephants in a western zoo is 50 times more expensive than conserving them in the wild.

On a personal level, I feel a strong connection with Taronga Zoo. Back in the 1960s my love of animals led me to a job at this zoo, where I became the first female zookeeper.

Now the zoo needs to step into the 21st century and drop its elephant import plans.

If elephants from Thailand are imported, Australia will be supporting animal torture.

I have chosen to write to The Veterinarian as I am sure your readership, the majority of whom work to reduce the suffering of animals, would share my concern about the mistreatment of young elephants in Thailand.

Lee Rhiannon

Greens MP, NSW

The Asian elephant is classed as endangered, with a surviving population of only 30,000 to 55,000, a tenth the size of the African elephant population.

As habitat destruction continues throughout their range and they are brought into increasing conflict with humans and agriculture, Australasian zoos have a mandate through world and regional zoological organisations to take a more active conservation and educational role.

We are taking up that role.

Taronga, Melbourne and Auckland Zoos are forming a Cooperative Conservation Program and are proud to announce significant long-term commitments to Asian elephants.

These include in-situ conservation programs such as supporting a project to protect the largest remaining herd of wild elephants in southern Thailand, separating them from local villages where they come into conflict with humans, as well as strengthening linkages through veterinary training and staff exchange programs with Thailand, and comprehensive community and school-based conservation education programs at zoos in Australasia.

Of course, recent media attention has focused on one particular feature of this program, the zoos’ plans to bring nine Asian elephants from Thailand.

Working with regional zoos, Taronga has sent life sciences and veterinary experts to Thailand over the last several months to assess domestic elephants with a view to bring eight females and a male into the Australasian region, which already has 10 Asian elephants of various ages.

The zoo teams have visited reputable elephant camps where they aim to select confident elephants in excellent physiological condition and importantly, including females that have either bred in the past or have been exposed to positive calf-rearing behaviours.

Obviously, Taronga would only consider domestic elephants such as those that have become largely unemployed following the decline in the logging industry and now held in camps for tourists.

The zoos are committed to providing these elephants with the highest possible quality of care including state-of-the-art housing, expert staff and high levels of staff interaction to meet their social, psychological and physical needs.

Melbourne Zoo has already built their magnificent ‘Trail of the Elephants’ exhibit. At Taronga, the massive ‘Asian Elephant Rainforest’ is currently under construction and due to open in early 2005. This multi-species exhibit will also include 40 different species of the Asian rainforest, including one of only six breeding pairs of Silvery Gibbons in the world.  Other species will be fishing cats, Malayan tapir, François Langur and many bird species in towering walk-through aviaries.

Collectively, the zoos aim to present the wonder and magnificence, but also the precarious future, of many animals of the Asian rainforest to our visitors by creating a window into this unique habitat and fostering awareness, and engendering support for ongoing conservation measures both here and overseas.

Will Meikle

General Manager, Life Sciences, Taronga Zoo

Concern is growing among the animal welfare community over Taronga Zoo’s plans to swap native Australian wildlife for Thai elephants.

When Taronga Zoo decided it wanted more elephants, it proceeded to negotiate an animal swap with Thailand. Unlike many other government agencies, which make sensitive animal welfare decisions in consultation with the animal welfare community, the NSW Zoological Parks Board did not feel it needed to undertake consultation with stakeholder groups and made a bilateral decision that Australia needs more Asiatic elephants.

And those elephants are best exhibited in the middle of a large city.

Due to the secret nature of Taronga’s planned animal swap, details are scant.

However, documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show the animal welfare community have very good reason to be concerned.

Taronga is seeking to obtain four new Asiatic elephants who will be housed in a $40 million enclosure, currently under construction.

Although the enclosure is likely to be more environmentally enriched than the current exhibit, Taronga has no way of obtaining additional land beyond its boundaries, established nearly 100 years ago.

Yet it has an abundance of room at the Dubbo Open Plain Zoo. If the NSW Zoological Board is determined to have more elephants, one has to wonder how maintaining such large, complex, wild animals in the middle of a large city can possibly be justified, when there are obvious alternatives available.

Furthermore, Thai elephants are routinely broken-in using a method call the crush. Investigations in Thailand show the crush is the standard breaking-in method used in the country, even though it is strongly opposed by many in the Thai community, due to its extremely violent nature.

The elephants Taronga is seeking may well have been broken-in using this method. However, beyond that, there are very serious questions regarding the treatment the traded Australian natives can expect to receive in their new home.

If elephants, Thailand’s most revered animal, are treated with such brutality when broken-in, the question must be asked, how will our natives fair?

Taronga is sending them to Thailand knowing once they leave this country their welfare will no longer be protected by Australia’s animal welfare laws. To my mind Taronga is selling out native wildlife, to whom we owe a duty of care, in pursuit of their own short term goals.

We all love baby elephants, but baby elephants belong in the forests of Thailand with their mothers. Not in Mosman.

The $40 million spent on Taronga’s new enclosure would have gone a very long way to protecting habitat in Thailand. I wonder if that ever occurred to Taronga’s management?

Siobhan O’Sullivan

on behalf of Animal Liberation NSW