As people mourn the death of the Woodland Park Zoo’s youngest elephant, 6-year-old Hansa, another pachyderm story is playing out in Alaska.
The Alaska Zoo board finally, after years of pressure, decided to relocate the zoo’s lone elephant, Maggie. It must be determined first, however, if the 25-year-old African elephant is healthy enough for travel.
In the wild, Maggie would be at the prime of her life, reproducing and roaming with the herd. In captivity, Maggie twice recently was unable to get up off her concrete floor, requiring the help the Anchorage Fire Department to raise her up.
Maggie arrived at the zoo in 1983 as a baby when her herd in South Africa was culled. She has been alone since Dec. 14, 1997, when the zoo’s other elephant, Annabelle, died at age 33 of a foot infection.
Attention was focused on the zoo in 2004, when it was revealed that Maggie was overweight at 9,120 pounds, more a proper weight for a male African elephant. Calls were made at the time to move Maggie. But the Alaska Zoo did not want to give up its only elephant. The board decided to address the problem by … buying a $100,000, 16,000-pound, custom-built treadmill.
Maggie, being the elephant that she is, has never used the treadmill. (Leading to the updated idiom, “the 16,000-pound treadmill in the room,” to mean ignoring the obvious.) The treadmill was part of a $1 million program to improve Maggie’s living situation.
The zoo says she has lost close to a 1,000 pounds through feeding changes and more activity. They think a change in her hay caused colic that caused her to lay down last month.
Regarding the relocation, a zoo spokeswoman last week said, “The decision was based on what’s best for Maggie.” Too bad for Maggie the zoo took years to recognize the obvious.
How can the zoo justify keeping such a social creature alone for 10 years? Alaskans’ affection for her does not a herd make.
In 2004, zoo director Tex Edwards said, “Elephants are just like people, they will be as lazy as they can be and still eat.”
Such anthropomorphic dung is exactly the problem.
Blaming a confined animal for being lazy?
Elephants are like people in that they are social, emotional, intelligent and live in complex communities – in the elephants’ case, a herd led by a matriarch. They are not lazy like humans. In the wild, elephants roam for miles and miles to get the food they eat. Female elephants do not live alone.
For Maggie’s sake, we hope the zoo has acted in time to give this long-suffering creature a chance to live with other elephants, preferably in a warm climate. Perhaps the treadmill can be sold on e-Bay to help finance Maggie’s travels.
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