Where the elephants roam By William Mullen Tribune
staff reporter
Sun May 29, 9:40 AM ET
In the rural hills of central Tennessee, workmen are
almost finished installing electrified double fences
around 2,700 acres of forest: an 8-foot-high,
chain-link barrier on the outside, and a much stronger
inner fence of tubular steel and cable.
The strong one keeps huge animals inside. The other
keeps the public out.
This is the Elephant Sanctuary, a 10-year-old hospice
for elderly, ailing elephants from circuses and zoos.
Here the animals spend their final years roaming,
dining on wild plants and cavorting with their own
kind.
Chicagoans began hearing a lot about it in October,
when an elephant died of a rare infection in Lincoln
Park Zoo and animal-rights activists demanded the
zoo's other two elephants be sent to Hohenwald. The
subsequent deaths of those elephants--one from old
age, one apparently from the same infection--ratcheted
up the fury over not moving them.
It is an ongoing fight that illuminates the tensions
between the sanctuary and zoos and circuses that once
voluntarily sent ailing elephants to the unusual
Tennessee facility. Now, with the sanctuary often
siding with animal-rights groups in their fierce
criticism of zoos, many resist sending animals there.
Still, some heartwarming success stories at the
sanctuary have made an impression on the North
American zoo community, which is considering building
spacious elephant "conservation centers." Those
centers physically would resemble the Hohenwald
sanctuary, but the philosophical differences would be
vast.
Sanctuary founder Carol Buckley will not allow her
elephants to breed; she only takes females. By
definition, she says, a sanctuary is a non-breeding
facility where animals live out their lives. She also
won't let the public in to see the elephants, saying
they are not there to entertain visitors.
The very existence of zoos has always revolved around
giving people an up-close look at animals. Those
visceral encounters, the theory goes, generate
appreciation for the peril animals face in shrinking
wildernesses globally. Zoos also maintain their
captive populations through breeding and manage them
for genetic diversity, a skill now needed to maintain
wild populations.
Buckley, 51, and sanctuary co-founder Scott Blais, 32,
have long been outspoken in their feelings that nearly
all zoos give elephants inadequate, poorly designed
spaces to live in, contributing to chronic health
problems.
They are adamant that elephants shouldn't be made to
perform, or even be kept on public display. They say
no more should be brought in from the wild and prefer
that none be bred in captivity.
PETA praised
Buckley is forthright in her admiration and gratitude
for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an
animal-rights group that wants to eliminate elephants
from zoos. Some of the elephants at the sanctuary
arrived as a result of campaigns by PETA activists.
"If it is going to take an extremist group to make us
change, to make us do things differently with
elephants, I am in support of it," Buckley said. "The
elephant stuff [PETA does] is right on. I support them
100 percent. If it wasn't for PETA, it wouldn't be
happening."
That is a big change of heart, she concedes, from the
days when she hired out to circuses, performing with a
female Asian elephant named Tarra that she had taught
to roller skate.
In 1984, she said, a woman grabbed her after a show in
California and shouted: "That's abuse. You're abusing
your animal by making it skate like that."
The accusation stunned her. "I knew it wasn't abusive,
but the perception of it was that it was abusive," she
said. "It got me to look at the bigger picture of what
and how we are going to teach the public about these
animals. Eventually I stopped the act, because I
realized it was sending the wrong message."
Over the next few years she began toying with the
sanctuary idea, especially after she and Tarra joined
the African Lion Safari in Ontario, where resident
elephants could roam off-view from the public,
responsible only for performing regularly in an arena.
There she met Blais, then a teenager working as a
part-time keeper and being trained, she said, by men
who controlled the elephants with hooks and clubs.
Blais was in awe when he saw Buckley work with
elephants.
"The guys would have a terrible struggle to get Rascha
[an elephant] to lay down for a bath. Carol showed me
how to pat her on the hind end and say, `OK, Rascha,
you're a good girl, and I'm going to ask you to lay
down for a bath.' And she would, with no fuss."
Buckley moved on, but she and Blais kept in touch,
talking about a sanctuary plan. In 1995 they found 110
suitable acres 85 miles southwest of Nashville near
Hohenwald, an old hill town hit hard by its employers
fleeing to cheap overseas labor. Bringing Tarra along,
they put up a barn for four elephants.
For a year, no money or other elephants came their
way. Then early in 1996, a circus owner asked Buckley
to come to Florida and take a sick elephant named
Barbara. CNN also called, asking if they could do a
story on the move.
"The next thing you know," said Buckley, "we got a
$10,000 check from somebody who saw the show and liked
the idea of what we were doing. That really started
things going."
Problems in captivity
More journalists did stories on the sanctuary, telling
how Buckley started it on the premise that elephants
need access to large amounts of space. In the wild
they walk 30 to 50 miles daily, she said, and denying
captive elephants the ability to roam causes them
physical and psychic problems.
Many captive elephants die of bone disease, which she
charges comes from spending much of their lives
standing on concrete surfaces. Moreover, she contends
that disease is prone to spread among animals kept in
close quarters.
The zoo community disagrees, noting that life
expectancies for wild and captive elephants are about
the same and that wild elephants are prone to the same
foot injuries and diseases as captive ones. But as a
procession of ailing, older elephants arrived at the
sanctuary and seemed to thrive, Buckley found a
powerful megaphone in the media.
On July 6, 1999, National Geographic was at the
sanctuary to film the arrival of Shirley, a
52-year-old Asian elephant that had been living alone
in a Monroe, La., zoo for 22 years.
The TV crew had left for the day when Jenny, a
30-year-old gimpy with arthritis, wandered into the
barn from a day outdoors. Seeing Shirley in a barn
stall, Jenny began wailing with such passion that
Blais grabbed his own video recorder.
"Jenny knew right away who Shirley was and was wailing
and screaming," Buckley said. "Shirley wasn't quite
sure how to take the attention; then all of a sudden
we saw her eyes got big, like there was a jolt of
recognition as she remembered who Jenny was."
Buckley knew that in 1976, the two elephants had
briefly been owned by the same circus. It turned out
Shirley, an adult, had been housed with younger
elephants while recovering from a broken leg. Jenny,
then 7, was in that group and immediately solicited
mothering from Shirley. They were together only a few
weeks before each was leased to a different circus.
As the reunited elephants bellowed 23 years later,
keepers put them in adjoining stalls. They tenderly
entwined their trunks between the bars. The next day,
released into the outdoors, they were inseparable.
When they weren't using their trunks to caress each
other, they were raising them to trumpet their joy.
The moving reunion became the centerpiece of a
National Geographic documentary on captive elephants
that won an Emmy and brought international fame and
donations to the sanctuary. Generous, well-to-do
Tennesseans joined the sanctuary's board of directors.
Last year, Buckley said, 34,000 donor/members
contributed $4.5 million. The money is being used to
expand the original 110 acres to 2,700 acres and to
build bigger, better barns, she said.
They now house a herd of 11 Asian female elephants as
well as three African females that have their own
facility and separate range to roam. When construction
is complete, there will be room for 12 elephants the
sanctuary wants to bring from the Hawthorn Corp., a
troubled McHenry County circus animal training
facility.
Buckley said wild-elephant researchers visiting the
sanctuary say the elephants behave much as they would
in the wild, displaying identical social dynamics and
herd organization.
Shirley, for instance, took the role of matriarch of
the sanctuary's Asian females. In nature, elephant
herds are made up of adult females and their young,
with the males coming around only to mate. Each herd
is headed by an elder female on whose experience and
knowledge the rest rely.
Jenny, meanwhile, bosses others around as if she were
Shirley's daughter. In the wild, matriarchal
leadership is passed on through lineage.
The elephants can choose at all times to be in the
barn or out roaming the hills, but much of their diet
comes from browsing the grounds. They have learned
through the years which wild grasses and other plants
are tastiest in which season.
Three times a day the staff brings supplemental foods,
vitamins and medicines, wherever the animals may be.
Keepers are convinced the elephants seek out certain
plants for medicinal purposes, such as eating the bark
of slippery elm or poison ivy leaves for upset
stomachs.
With the relatively mild Tennessee winters, Buckley
said only in January do the animals generally spend
long periods in the heated barns.
`It's not about you, here'
As big as the property is, it remains a captive
enclosure, and with captivity come some eccentric
behaviors. The Tennessee hills, for example, provide
an endless stream of stray dogs, and a little white
one named Bella has become Tarra's pet.
"She lives and goes everywhere with Tarra," said
Buckley. "Tarra pets her with her trunk and her foot.
Bella will roll over and solicit belly strokes from
Tarra."
One natural behavior Buckley will not allow is
breeding.
"If they come here, we let them become extinct," she
said, underlining the philosophy that elephants should
not be in captivity. "There is a big difference
between extinction in captivity and in the wild."
Nor is the public permitted to see the elephants. The
sanctuary's electronically controlled gate swings open
only for visitors on prearranged business, though
exceptions are sometimes made for large donors.
"People go to zoos to be entertained," said Buckley.
"We say that elephants shouldn't be on display. Here,
you don't get to come on our grounds. It's not about
you; here, it's about the animals."
Instead, remote video cameras broadcast live footage
through "Elecam," a feature on the sanctuary's Web
site, elephants.com. Buckley says hundreds of people
from all over the world regularly watch the elephants,
getting to know their lives in intimate detail. She
also uses Elecam as a teaching tool while lecturing in
classrooms via computer linkups.
Visitor center coming
Buckley expects tourism to increase after the
sanctuary builds a visitor center next year, though
people standing on an observation platform probably
will never be closer to an animal than 300 yards. The
best view will be via 30 remote video cameras visitors
will use to locate and zoom in on elephants with
handheld controls.
"There are alternative, more progressive ways to teach
and to not exploit the animals," said Blais. "Even if
you don't see the elephants with your own eyes from
the visitor center, we think you'll have a more
powerful experience than if the elephant was standing
just 2 feet away from you.
"We hear from people in Hohenwald that the elephants
won't have an impact on them unless they can see the
animals, but people aren't going to get a true
appreciation for them unless they see them in a
natural setting."
Stung by the campaigns against elephant captivity, the
American Zoo Association last week reported results
from a Harris poll showing that 95 percent of adult
Americans believe zoos give children greater
appreciation of elephants and 94 percent believe
children are more concerned about animals they learn
about in zoos.
In January, 78 zoos currently holding elephants in
North America announced long-range plans to expand
their elephant collections and to broaden research and
support of surviving wild populations.
Taking notice of the sanctuary idea, AZA executive
director Sydney Butler said the zoo industry is
considering trying something similar--not hospices,
but "conservation centers."
"AZA institutions have considered species conservation
centers, leading to larger spaces for animals," Butler
said during a recent Chicago visit.
The big difference would be that the zoo version would
be a breeding facility with bull elephants, resulting
in "true family herds, with infants." The centers
probably would permit public access and might shift
family herds in and out of zoos.
"It has to be carefully considered for the future,"
said Butler, stressing that plans for such centers are
only preliminary.
Townspeople critical
In the town of Hohenwald, Buckley has garnered support
from civic leaders and has been enthusiastically
received at schools, where she volunteers to lecture.
Still, many residents are surprisingly sour about her
and her enterprise.
"You hear all about the elephants out there on
television, but as far as we're concerned, they're not
here, because we never see them," said Carolyn Bell,
manager of Hohenwald's only motel, which gets some
business from occasional sanctuary visitors.
"I don't think bad about it; I just don't think it
benefits the town. I think they started it to give
themselves a job. That's my opinion, and a lot of
other people around here think so, too.
"If it would let people in, maybe they'd think better
of it. Some kids around here will never see an
elephant in their whole life."
Buckley said she is aware of the negative
undercurrents in the area but believes those will
disappear once the sanctuary visitor center opens and
begins to attract tourists.
She also insists the sanctuary is merely a bystander
caught in the struggle between the zoo industry and
the animal rightists, but she makes it clear that she
thinks zoos need to pay attention to her operation and
change how they care for elephants.
"I don't see zoos ever becoming extinct," Buckley
said. "I see them getting managers who have a vision
to change their facilities to meet the needs of the
animals. Instead of a business mind, you need a
visionary to run the zoos."
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