Bay Area Zoo to Close Its Elephant Exhibit

Following the deaths of two of their four elephants, managers of the San Francisco Zoo have decided to permanently shutter the city’s aging and inadequate pachyderm exhibit.

When the two remaining elephants are packed off to sanctuaries or another zoo, it will be the first time since the San Francisco Zoo opened in 1929 that visitors will not be able to witness the comings and goings of the world’s largest land mammals from Africa and Asia.

After facing heavy criticism from Bay Area animal rights advocates for years over the zoo’s small and antiquated elephant enclosures, the issue came to a head when Maybelle, a 44-year-old African elephant, unexpectedly collapsed and died April 22.

Maybelle’s death followed by less than seven weeks the demise of Calle, a 37-year-old Asian elephant who was put down by zoo officials because of her deteriorating health. Her conditions included degenerative joint disease, a history of tuberculosis and an old injury sustained in a highway crash in Mexico when she was a performer in a traveling circus.

Elephants generally live 50 to 60 years in the wild, experts say.

Calle spent a good part of her life at the Los Angeles Zoo, where she was once scheduled to be sent to a sanctuary in Tennessee because of her infirmities. But before the move could be completed, she was placed on loan to the San Francisco Zoo, where she was diagnosed with a human form of TB. Ultimately, she lived out her days in the often foggy and chilly zoo.

Zoo officials said Maybelle died of heart failure. They have not yet determined the underlying cause of her cardiovascular collapse, zoo spokeswoman Nancy Chan said.

According to zoo records, however, Maybelle had a long history of health problems, ranging from chronic colic and anemia to various foot and joint ailments.

The two surviving elephants -- Tinkerbelle and Lulu, both 38 -- also have a number of health problems, including colic and various foot, leg and hip ailments, zoo records show.

Since the losses of Calle and Maybelle, the zoo has been the target of protests by animal rights advocates.

Activists say few if any zoos in the U.S. provide the kind of enclosed space that is adequate for these giant creatures that sometimes roam 30 to 50 miles a day in the wild. The enforced sedentary life in zoos leads to chronic disease and painful physical deterioration that culminates in premature death, they say.

Because animals such as these cannot be returned to the wild, the only compassionate solution is to relocate them to sanctuaries, those animal rights advocates say.

The San Francisco Zoo has two enclosures, one about 17,000 square feet for its Asian elephants and another of about 10,000 square feet for its African species. Together, they comprise a little more than half an acre. Plans, since shelved, were in the works to expand both enclosures, Chan said.

By comparison, the L.A. Zoo has slightly more than two acres, about 100,000 square feet, for its elephants, while the Oakland Zoo plans to double the size of its 2 1/2-acre enclosure in June.

“The problem of lack of space for elephants in zoos is irreconcilable,” wrote Elliot Katz, a Mill Valley, Calif., veterinarian and founder of In Defense of Animals, in an opinion piece for the San Francisco Chronicle published after Calle’s death. “The space allocated to elephants at the San Francisco Zoo prevents normal exercise and forces them to stand on hard, dry compacted surfaces, causing the arthritis and foot disease that have plagued Calle, Tinkerbelle, Maybelle and Lulu.”

Katz, who through In Defense of Animals has led a five-year lobbying effort to close the San Francisco elephant exhibit, said in a subsequent interview that zoo records show that all four pachyderms “have been on painkillers for most of their lives to mask their pain while the degeneration keeps getting worse and worse.”

San Francisco Zoo Director Manuel Mollinedo disagreed. Elephants “can be in zoos if you have adequate exhibit space and you have very well-trained staff solely dedicated to elephants. Then you can have the kind of exhibit that we can all be proud of,” he said.

After the deaths of Calle and Maybelle, however, the zoo’s staunch opposition to closing the elephant exhibit appeared to fade in the face of additional political pressure from some city supervisors.

Leading the charge from City Hall was Supervisor Fiona Ma, chairwoman of a special committee auditing the zoo’s performance.

“While the elephants are a popular attraction at the zoo, holding them under inadequate conditions sends the wrong message to the visiting public whom the zoo hopes to inspire to embrace conservation,” Ma said in a March 29 letter to Mollinedo. The supervisor also wrote a resolution asking the San Francisco Zoological Society, which operates the zoo, to move the remaining elephants to a sanctuary.

Mollinedo told supervisors last week that, pending “guidance” from the American Zoo and Aquarium Assn., which accredits 215 U.S. zoos, Tinkerbelle and Lulu would be moved to a sanctuary or another zoo and the San Francisco exhibit would be closed.

Zoo supporters and critics squabbled for more than an hour over how long it would take to transfer the pachyderms. Mollinedo and other zoo officials said moving elephants “is very tricky” and could take up to six months.

If a sanctuary is chosen, there are two prime candidates. The closest is the Performing Animal Welfare Society’s 2,300-acre sanctuary near San Andreas, the county seat of Calaveras County in the Sierra foothills. The other is the 2,700-acre Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tenn. Both facilities have fenced elephant enclosures ranging from 25 acres to more than 200 acres.

Both have offered to take San Francisco’s remaining pachyderms at no cost. The more likely candidate, most observers agreed, would be the Calaveras facility, because it is closer and is already home to five elephants.

Pat Derby, co-founder of the Performing Animal Welfare Society, said the large amount of land available in sanctuaries leads to better health and improved muscle tone, even for elderly elephants.

“The African elephants are incredible moving machines,” she said. “They come out of the barn, they go over the hill, then down to the stream and into the wallow and then back to the barn. I personally think that living in zoos represses elephants’ natural behavior.”

The sanctuary, about 140 miles east of the Bay Area, features two new heated barns, one each for the Asians and the Africans, she said. Each barn is 20,000 square feet, larger than either enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo.

Eventually, the Performing Animal Welfare Society plans to expand the sanctuary, adding enclosures for lions, tigers and bears, all “retired” from zoos and circuses, Derby said.

Carol Buckley, co-founder of the Tennessee sanctuary where a dozen pachyderms live, said the elephant problems at the San Francisco Zoo were hardly unique. “What we’re seeing in zoos is the aging of this [elephant] population and the cumulative effects of their lives in captivity. My mission is to help the elephants and educate the public and facilitate moving them to sanctuaries.”

Clearly, she says, elephants are a great draw for any zoo and managers are often loath to part with them.

But as modern research has revealed more about elephant behavior and needs, “I think you’re going to find that even seven acres or 10 acres aren’t enough for them.

“Until you are in a position to observe elephants in a vast space, you can’t see how dysfunctional they become in these confined zoo spaces.”