News

MIXED FEELINGS OVER ANIMAL PARK BIRTH

It has been reported by the BBC that Howletts wild animal park is celebrating its claim to have the best captive elephant breeding programme in Europe after the birth of a new calf, but an RSPCA report is calling for an immediate end to their breeding and importation in European zoos.

An African elephant named Junu is the second to be born at the park near Canterbury within the past three months.

Nine calves have been born at Howletts in total.

The wild animal park is hoping raise £1m for a  new larger elephant house.

The RSPCA  is however calling for tougher welfare standards for elephants currently kept in European zoos and for an immediate end to their breeding and importation.

RSPCA commissioned research highlights a catalogue of welfare concerns for captive elephants in European zoos and the RSPCA has seen no evidence to suggest that European zoos will ever be able to provide satisfactory welfare for elephants.

In a report by the RSPCA , Ros Clubb of Oxford University, a zoologist and co-author of the report, said the study was done after "work by other biologists had already set alarm bells ringing."

Findings have shown, for example, that 35 percent of zoo females fail to breed and that 15 to 25 percent of Asian elephant calves are stillborn.

Clubb and her co-author, Georgia Mason, also a zoologist at Oxford University, said females in the wild normally don't conceive until around 18 years of age, but female elephants in zoos often begin breeding as early as age 12, putting them and their offspring at higher risk of death and illness.

The researchers also found that zoo elephants are often overweight—up to 50 percent heavier than their counterparts in the wild—and commonly exhibit unusual behavior such as weaving to and fro.

Mason said such conditions likely stem from a combination of ill health, unusually small social groupings, inadequate dwelling space, and European weather that is often colder than in the elephants' native habitats.

This low level of family structure and the relatively small enclosures of zoos contribute to boredom and distress, said Mason. Wild elephants roam over distances as much as 60 to 100 times larger than typical zoo housing for elephants.

click here for the RSPCA  Elephant campaign petition