Portland zoo sees threat to elephants

PORTLAND – Chendra, a ton and a half of Asian elephant, strolls along paths usually busy with families of visitors to the Oregon Zoo.

The zoo has six elephants, and she is one of three trained to walk the grounds before visitors arrive. Keepers say it keeps the elephants in shape and stimulates their minds.

That’s important for an elephant program, but the program may be facing problems.

As the zoo prepares to build its herd, it faces some who contend that zoos are bad for elephants.

Animal-rights activists argue that the beasts need room to roam and that those in zoos should be sent to sprawling sanctuaries.

Groups stage protests, letter-writing campaigns, file lawsuits and lobby politicians and the public.

Last year they pressured San Francisco supervisors to effectively close the antiquated elephant exhibit there unless it can provide the animals with at least 15 acres. Detroit’s zoo did away with an elephant exhibit in April. Friday, the president of Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo offered to quit after a spate of recent animal deaths, including three elephants.

Administrators at the Oregon Zoo, which provides 1.5 acres for elephants, say the battle may be headed their way.

In Defense of Animals recently used the Freedom of Information Act to get elephant medical records from the Oregon Zoo and plans similar actions at 30 public zoos nationwide.

Oregon Zoo veterinarians euthanized two elephants whose foot problems had become so severe they couldn’t support their own weight in 1996 and 1997.

Mike Keele, deputy zoo director, defends the way keepers do their jobs. As coordinator of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association’s Asian Elephant Species Survival Plan, he says the keepers lead the charge to improve captive elephants’ lives.

“Zoos are doing more for elephants,” Keele says, “than any of those groups are.”

Keeping the animals’ feet clean and dry helps prevent debilitating foot ailments that critics say are the scourge of elephants and a frequent cause of premature deaths.

As they do with the cows, keepers spend time with the two bulls every morning, assessing their condition and moods.

Those who know them use “mellow” or “laid-back” to describe Rama and his father, 43-year-old Packy. But as every keeper knows, with one twitch of a trunk or weight shift into a wall, a bull elephant can kill a person.

Rama weighs 8,280 pounds, and at 12,520 pounds, Packy is the biggest Asian elephant in North America.

With the females, smaller and more social than males, keepers use a training method called free contact. They enter the animals’ enclosures or walk them around the zoo, using positive and negative reinforcement, voice and hand commands and a hooked tool called an ankus.

But with the bulls, trainers use only so-called protected contact, keeping their distance behind steel bars as thick as a man’s arm.

No day at the Oregon Zoo’s elephant compound is exactly like another. Some days call for routine medical exams or blood draws for research. Others find keepers inventing games designed to exercise the animals and to make them think.

Through training, the Oregon Zoo’s elephants allow blood to be drawn from their ankles and ears. They know how to blow into a plastic bag, so its contents can be tested for tuberculosis.

“The more time you spend with them,” says keeper Pat Flora, who has cared for elephants for 25 years, “the better chances you have of developing good relationships.”

The American Zoo and Aquarium Association accredits 212 zoos. Of those, 78 hold about 300 Asian and African elephants. Since 1990, eight U.S. zoos have closed their elephant exhibits, but others are investing in theirs.

With the population aging, zoos know that if they don’t step up breeding and work hard to manage foot problems, visitors won’t have any elephants to see 30 to 50 years from now.