Home, Sweet Home

CBS News reports that more and more American zoos are closing their elephant enclosures. This follows the unexplained deaths of several elephants in zoos across America. Reasons given for the deaths - and for the closures - are that the enclosures are too small and there is insufficient room to expand.
The elephant is an intelligent animal with a very large brain. It needs stimulus. It needs interest. Most of all it needs to do what elephants do - roam. In their African homeland herds - yes herds, not just ones and twos - roam the land, travelling up to 50 miles a day looking for food. Yes, their main interest is sustenance but in their travels they learn, they observe, they contribute to the natural environment. However big an enclosure they have in a zoo, they have not the chance to interact with the environment in the same way. There are no predators to avoid. There are no other animals at all with which they can interact. Food is served to them. They lose their true reason to exist.
However much the zoos want you to think that they have the animals' welfare at heart the main reason they are closing the elephant facilities is money. In today's more enlightened environment the public don't want to see caged and restricted animals. So to give them enough space would cost too much. Many zoos are sending their elephants to a "sanctuary" where they have much more space, hundreds of acres in which to roam. But even the owner of the sanctuary is saying that this is not the real answer.
I would suggest that the true answer is to put your money where your mouth is for these animals. Pay to make the elephants' natural environment safe. Humans are the main cause of the decline of this noble beast. The "glory" of hunting them was encouraged by the British, and other explorers. The greed for their tusks as ivory was a further nail in the elephants' coffins. If we could pay to give them back their natural habitat in Africa and Asia and protect it, then we would have done a true service to their cause.
Mankind and his greed is the main cause of the decline of the elephant. Mankind could still turn the tables and save it.