Orange County Fair joins the no-elephant-rides bandwagon

It’s a relief to animal welfare advocates -- and elephants, no doubt -- that the board of the Orange County Fair voted last week to end the 25-year tradition of elephant rides at the annual event. The Santa Ana Zoo announced in December that it too would halt elephant rides, which have nearly vanished as entertainment at institutions accredited by the Assn. of Zoos and Aquariums. The Los Angeles County Fair was urged last year by animal welfare advocates -- and this paper’s editorial page -- to stop elephant rides, although fair officials continued the attraction anyway.

The decisions to do away with the rides have provoked online dismay and grumbling from people who were fans of the tradition. Everyone understands why no zoo is going to let you pet or ride a meat-eating, ferocious lion or tiger, but people are more perplexed about why it’s an issue to ride an elephant. After all, they appear to be gentle giants. The Los Angeles Zoo often took its beloved Asian elephant, Gita, who died several years ago, on strolls around the grounds in the early mornings.

“Aren’t elephants beasts of burden in Asia?” a colleague of mine asked recently. Yes, they have been -- for centuries. But they haven’t done it willingly, say animal welfare advocates and experts. Elephants are trained for riders on their backs and circus stunts with a variety of coercive measures, including being chained, forced to kneel down or prodded with an ankus or bullhook -- which is a tool with a curved hook on the end of a hammer-like shank. In an effort to treat elephants more naturally, zookeepers are minimizing their own contact with elephants, which, in turn, reduces the need to carry a bullhook for protection. (Keepers are forbidden even to brandish a bullhook at an elephant at most top-tier zoos today.)

And the world’s largest land mammal has been known to bolt, flinging a rider off or trampeling a crowd. “I think people falsely believe elephants are domesticated animals,” said Catherine Doyle, an official with the welfare group In Defense of Animals. “There is no such thing as a domesticated elephant. There are trained elephants.”

The more we lift those burdens off these beasts, the better off they will be.

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Santa Ana Zoo ends elephant rides

One tradition the L.A. County Fair can do without

Note to Ringling Bros.: They’re elephants, not clowns