Buffalo Zoo Elephants Move Out for Summer While Habitat is Expanded
By Tom Buckham, The Buffalo News, N.Y.
Apr. 15–There will be no gawking at elephants this summer at the Buffalo Zoo. Two of the three female Asian elephants were transported to the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium on Sunday night to make way for expansion of the Elephant House, and the third followed them to Ohio on Monday night.
They won’t be back until summer’s end — at the soonest.
Donna M. Fernandes, president and CEO, said the zoo accepted the offer of temporary shelter from the Columbus Zoo, in suburban Powell, Ohio, after deciding against building a temporary shelter in the Delaware Park zoo grounds or renting a horse arena or other large facility.
Packing the pachyderms off to another zoo was the most expensive alternative, but also best for the animals’ "health, comfort and well-being," she said. Columbus, with four elephants of its own, was one of the few zoos within a day’s drive that had the capacity to harbor extra animals.
"Three more was not a problem for them," Fernandes said.
It’s an example of zoos "working together for the betterment of the animals," said Jerry Borin, Columbus Zoo executive director.
No sooner had the move been announced Monday morning, however, than it was denounced by In Defense of Animals, the California-based animal rights organization that earlier this year named Buffalo’s zoo one of the nation’s 10 worst for elephants.
Accusing the zoo of "sneaking" the animals off "under cover of darkness," the group issued an e-mail calling it "cruel and traumatic to force three elephants who are not accustomed to traveling onto a truck and ship them off to another zoo, as if they were pieces of furniture to be put in storage."
Surapa and Buki, the younger of the three, suffered no ill effects from the six-hour trip, Fernandes said. Keepers who accompanied them reported they were at play in their new Ohio digs shortly after being led off the transport trailer, she said. Zoo veterinarian Kurt Volle, animal curator Kevin Murphy and former head keeper Darryl Hoffman, now large mammal curator at the Houston Zoo, also made the trip.
Buki, the 50-year-old queen of the collection, was expected to reach Columbus in the same trailer sometime today.
Buffalo’s elephants will be rotated with the host zoo’s in the indoor-outdoor exhibit over the summer. Buffalo will foot the bill for shipping and feeding its animals and their keepers, who will stay with them during the summer.
Meanwhile, fencing has gone up around the zoo’s landmark 1912 Elephant House in preparation for interior work that will add 750 square feet to the holding area, boosting the total to 1,800 square feet.
The $1 million project, mandated in late 2006 by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums after it decided that, at 1,050 square feet, the building did not meet modern space requirements. Construction will add new heating, ventilation, electrical and plumbing systems, cushioned flooring, a lighting upgrade, roof improvements and skylights.
Adding more space than the AZA requires will not satisfy In Defense of Animals, which said the zoo "will be cramming three elephants into a space equivalent to a small house. This might be fine for a family of four people, but it is totally inadequate for three 7,000-to 10,000-pound elephants who would naturally walk 10 or more miles a day in the wild."
It repeated its demand that the zoo close its "antiquated and inhumane" exhibit and move the collection to the Elephant Sanctuary, an outdoor refuge in Tennessee."
Work on the Elephant House is targeted for completion by Labor Day.
tbuckham@buffnews.com
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