There are no elephants in Alaska
At least as of last night there are no elephants in Alaska. Maggie, a 2-ton, 25-year-old African elephant, has spent most of her life at the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage, but last night was flown in a C-17 military cargo plane to the Performing Animal Welfare Society facility in California (that’s the same type of aircraft used to move Willy the orca in 1998).
Watching the Maggie story in the Anchorage Daily News and on their Web site over the past 15 years or so has been upsetting, and is one of the reasons I’ve never been to the Anchorage zoo in my 100+ visits to the city. The zoo has been under ever-increasing pressure to move her to a warmer climate, particularly since her companion elephant died 10 years ago.
My last visit to a zoo was about 15 years ago, when my kids were small. We went to the Vancouver Game Farm which was bearable, and then perhaps a year later to one in Kamloops, BC, which finished me off with zoos forever. They had a grizzly bear in a tiny metal cage in an open dirt yard, and his cage floor was covered with fruit and vegetable scraps that I expect his keepers got for free from local grocery stores when they were no longer saleable. I was so disgusted that I still remember the bear and the feeling vividly today.
I’ve heard the justifications for zoos – by seeing these animals we understand them better and will care about them more. I’m just not buying that – seeing a highly intelligent animal in conditions such as that, the only thing I care about is getting them out of there. The only place a grizzly (or an orca, or many other highly-developed species) belongs is in the wild. And the only place a sociable animal such as an elephant belongs is with others of her kind.
I hope Maggie lives a long, and as happy a life as possible, in California.
About The Author
