That's Entertainment
The recent death of Gita the elephant raises new questions about displaying elephants as what activi
By Perry Crowe
During a visit to the L.A. Zoo in May, I bought one of those injector-mold wax animal figurines. I put in my three bucks, the machine lurched, I got a hit of melted crayon smell, and then, voilà, a miniature elephant stood on a base etched: LOS ANGELES ZOO. The wax elephant had its trunk tossed back and its front left foot raised off the ground. The pose was striking, considering one of the zoo's real elephants, Gita, was coincidentally struggling with a foot ailment. After having the equivalent of her little toe amputated to stave off a frequently fatal infection, Gita wore an antibiotic "boot" on her front left foot, the one the wax elephant dangled in the air. When Gita died June 10, the waxy coincidence became a tiny memorial.
The initial zoo explanation for the death was that Gita had been found "down," her front legs splayed out before her like a dog's.
"Basically, when a large animal like an elephant is prone in one position for a long time, various body fluids and toxins build up at that location," explains L.A. Zoo Director John Lewis. "And after a long time, because the blood flow is cut off, you start to get some actual dying of cells. So once the animal gets up and the pressure is off that area, the blood starts pumping through that area, so all the toxins get pumped through the animal's system. Now, the vets at the time gave her fluids and other medications, trying to counteract that, knowing that was going to happen, but unfortunately, because of the amount of time she had been down, they just weren't able to overcome it."
And so poor Gita died from being down too long, and it's this issue of time that has become so contentious. Originally, the zoo claimed Gita was found down at 5 a.m. on June 10. But the zoo has since issued a statement revealing an earlier report of Gita down at 8:45 p.m. the night before. According to an official statement, that gap between discovery and treatment is a breakdown in procedure and the time lag is "unacceptable."
That's something zoo administration and animal rights activists can agree on.
"The vets didn't arrive until around 7 [a.m.]," says Bill Dyer, director of In Defense of Animals' Southern California chapter. "That's ... ten hours and 15 minutes that she was down, unattended. And it's just hard to imagine what sort of psychological effect or physical suffering she went through in those ten hours."
"We were watching her 24 hours, seven days a week for nearly a year," explains Lewis. "Based on her improvement, we quit doing that. Her foot was better, she was getting fewer treatments, and so several months before she died, we had actually stopped the 24/7 observation."
Dyer's group has requested the security records for the night of June 9 through the morning of June 10. But IDA is far from the only interested party. As the enforcing agency of the Animal Welfare Act, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has launched its own investigation into Gita's death. The L.A. City Council has also pledged to look into the matter once Gita's necropsy results are done, which will take several more weeks, if not longer.
The city has a lot invested in its elephants, with a recently approved $40 million expansion of the L.A. Zoo's elephant exhibit now moving through the design phase.
"The intent is to provide the bigger space and better interpretative program for the public to help elephants," says Lewis. "So we're still moving forward with [the expansion]. It's difficult. We [at the zoo] deal with death all the time because we have a living collection here."
Dyer suggests the problem with the L.A. Zoo is it's run with a "zoo mentality."
"It's show business," he says. "[The zoo] would love to have eight little baby elephants over there. That's just box office for them. They'll tell you that, 'Oh, it's for conservation' and that's bullshit."
That depends on your definition of conservation. The L.A. Zoo participates in species survival programs from within the American Zoo and Aquarium Association, as part of a network of animal facilities working together on breeding programs. But while a conservation program shared by the L.A. Zoo, the San Diego Zoo, and other institutions eventually helped swell the ranks of the endangered California condor in the wild, an elephant breeding program wouldn't have the same goal.
"With the elephants, the breeding program is really just aimed at making sure we have elephants [in North America] for the long-term because we know we're not going to send elephants back to Asia or Africa," says Lewis. "So it's really to reduce [zoos'] impact on the wild."
For more information on the wild, consult Billy, the L.A. Zoo's lone bull elephant who was born free in Asia 28 years ago. He's easy to spot. He's the only elephant currently on display at the zoo and he bobs his head a lot. Billy's age and wild heritage make him extremely valuable to the AZA, and his semen even more so. Billy's virility is even part of what's keeping him out of the sanctuary that animal rights activists want so badly for him.
"Billy is an Asian bull," says Lewis. "He's from wild parents. So, genetically, he's very important in the United States. And if we were to send him to a sanctuary without talking to our [AZA] colleagues, that would cut short the ability of all the AZA zoos to maintain a self-sustaining population [of elephants]. So that would violate our ethics standards."
A man who has tried to bring a hard set of legal standards to the treatment of California's captive elephants is state Assemblyman Lloyd Levine (D-Van Nuys). Earlier in the year, he introduced a bill that would have made it a misdemeanor to provide three elephants with less than five acres of space, with a half-acre added for each additional pachyderm - which would have made the L.A. Zoo's current elephant allocations illegal. The bill was ultimately defeated, allegedly the victim of a lobbying campaign heavily supported by Feld Entertainment, the producers of the Ringling Bros. Circus.
Levine is still fighting for L.A.'s elephants, though. He has asked state Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez to create a Select Committee on Animal Welfare with Levine as chair. And Levine asserts Núñez has agreed to do so. Wielding subpoena power, the committee would look into Gita's death, focusing on the care she received in her final days.
"We don't have an inherent right to see elephants," Levine says. "There's no inherent right to have them in the zoo. And if your zoo can't provide the adequate care and space and other things that elephants need, then you shouldn't be able to have elephants."
Les Schobert, a former curator of the L.A. Zoo, who testified on behalf of Levine's defeated bill, sees something telling in such legislation.
"The fact that [animal welfare at zoos] is being put into the legislators' hands, how sad is that for zoos?" says Schobert. "Zoos should take their own lead instead of having legislators legislate them into compliance."
Published: 07/13/2006
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