Home to Share. West Suburbs.
Seeking single female roommate for high-spirited, inquisitive middle-age female. Must be African by birth or descent, age not important. Must be social and vegetarian. Trumpeting a plus, the louder the better. Large indoor space. Secure fenced yard, charming mudhole. All meals, clean daily bedding, electricity, heat provided free.
That tempting offer might be how Joyce, a 27-year-old African elephant, might word a want ad if she were in charge of finding a companion to share her space and keep her company at Brookfield Zoo.
Joyce lived with another female elephant, Christy, 28, until a week before Christmas, when Christy died from what the zoo said was a congenital kidney defect.
Finding a companion for Joyce is a top priority, but it is also a lengthy, nationwide, complex undertaking that offers a glimpse into evolving zoo philosophy and renewed commitment to keep elephants on display in the face of fierce opposition by animal-rights groups. To reinforce that commitment, Brookfield has plans to enlarge the elephant area to house a breeding herd.
It has started the search for Joyce’s companion through the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the zoo world’s accreditation agency.
Elephants, said Carol Sodaro, Brookfield’s associate curator of mammals, “are very social animals that live in large herds, with strong bonds and long social relationships with other elephants in the herd. It is important for them to interact with other elephants.”
There are 290 African and Asian elephants living in 78 accredited North American zoos. Basically, they are looked upon by the AZA as just two herds, the 147 African elephants in zoo collections and the 143 Asian elephants, said John Lehnhardt, an administrator at Disney World’s Animal Kingdom park in Florida.
He also is vice chair of the AZA’s elephant taxon group — TAG for short — which keeps tabs on the location, health, status and genetic history of all 290 zoo elephants. If a zoo wants to add to, subtract from or breed its elephant collection, it has to get the elephant TAG’s approval and input.
Brookfield asked the elephant TAG for companion candidates for Joyce from among all the females in the AZA African “herd.” Lehnhardt said the key issue in such a search “is how the overall situation at the zoo will fit for specific candidates.”
The elephant TAG has looked at Joyce’s life experiences and traits and is pulling together lists of available females in other zoos that appear to be compatible with her.
“Usually we come up with several potential opportunities,” said Lehnhardt, and the zoo works off that list.
“TAGs don’t know the individual animals and their personalities like the zoos do, so the final selection goes on at that level,” he said.
This is Brookfield’s second search in less than a year. Last May, 40-year-old Affie died. She was the fourth-oldest African elephant in North America and Christy’s companion for 25 years.
Joyce arrived at Brookfield last August. Born in the wild, she was in the U.S. a year later and had lived in a circus before moving to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in California, an AZA institution.
Since Christy’s unexpected death at Christmas, Joyce has relied on keepers for company, who work hard to make sure she has plenty of interaction all day long, Sodaro said. “She is doing really well. She gets training sessions every hour. She gets a bath and a full body inspection of every body part every day.
“We find interesting toys and treats, like giant snow cones — 55-gallon buckets filled with ice flavored with things like honey or molasses. We put big plastic barrels in with her, and she loves to beat them up, throw them around and make noise with them.”
Joyce has no history of problems bonding with other elephants, and Sodaro said she should be relatively easy to match with another animal.
Its two elephant deaths made 2009 a tough year for the zoo, putting it squarely in the crosshairs of animal-rights activists who charge that zoos cannot provide enough space for species that in the wild walk many miles a day. When elephants have to spend extended periods inside buildings, as they sometimes do in northern zoos with severe winters, activists charge that the hard concrete floors cause joint injuries.
One group, California-based In Defense of Animals, in January put Brookfield on its annual “Ten Worst Zoos for Elephants” list, demanding that Joyce be moved to a warmer climate and a place with more elephants, presumably a sanctuary.
The zoo issued a statement after the list came out, calling it “IDA’s annual publicity stunt.”
“IDA’s agenda is to close zoo elephant programs and to ultimately close zoos,” the statement said, noting that a national poll “shows that 95 percent of the public says seeing elephants in real life helps people appreciate them more and encourages people to learn more about them.”
More Top Picks Best Diabetic Shoes For Heavy Men
Stuart Strahl, Brookfield’s director, said zoos in general believe it is more crucial now than ever that people can continue to see elephants in zoos.
“There is no more charismatic animal in the world than the African elephant,” he said, but it is one whose future in the wild is in serious jeopardy.
In the last 30 years, the wild African elephant population dropped from 1.6 million to less than 500,000, he said. That is a loss of more than 100 a day, mainly because of ivory poaching and loss of traditional elephant territory to human settlement.
“How do you get people to care about conservation of species?” asks Strahl. “There is no way to understand what an elephant is except to experience one — to actually, physically see one in front of you.
“You get them to care about animals. Zoos see 185 million visitors a year in the U.S. When they are with us, we try to instruct and teach the plight of animals in the wild.
“There is no better ambassador species, whether they live in forests or savannas or plains, and there is no better animal for showing the plight of all wild animals than the elephant.”
Brookfield is committed to keeping elephants, Strahl said, and in recent years has nearly doubled the size of its elephant habitat and installed other new amenities. But beyond Joyce and her new companion, it is making much bigger plans — an entirely new elephant habitat between 3 and 5 acres in its northeast corner — and would like to have a breeding herd with a male and five or more females.
“We have it in our master plan,” said Strahl, “with much expanded outdoor and indoor space and much better enrichment possibilities. It won’t be in the next year or two. It depends on philanthropy and our ability to raise the funds to do it.”
Brookfield is one of more than 70 zoos putting money and expertise into building a 350-acre National Elephant Center in central Florida.
“It will provide space for elephants on a short- or long-term basis. It could house young male elephants, who are harder to place, in bachelor groups,” Lehnhardt said.
“It will be a place for zoo elephants while their zoos renovate facilities. It will focus on training our next generation of elephant managers in how to do the very best for elephants that we can,” he said.
The first elephants are scheduled to begin arriving at the new facility this year.
– – –
By the numbers
1.6 million
The population of African elephants in the wild 30 years ago
Fewer than 500,000
The current population of African elephants in the wild
290
The number of elephants living in 78 accredited zoos in North America
185 million
The number of visitors to U.S. zoos in a year
———-