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After a break the meeting resumed with testimony via telephone from John Lehnhardt, Executive Director of The National Elephant Center in Florida, and Heidi Riddle, co-founder of Riddle’s Elephant and Wildlife Sanctuary in Arkansas. Their purpose in this meeting was to explain the role of elephant sanctuaries. However, it must be noted that the NEC operates as a “collaborative effort between AZA institutions” to “provide care” and “contribute research, support and population management to accredited zoos with elephants.” At the time of the meeting the facility has also been open less than a month, and isn’t even yet an officially accredited AZA facility – a lack of standing which would seem to go against the AZA’s rules and Vehrs’ testimony of not sending elephants to non-AZA accredited facilities.
Heidi Riddle, in explaining REWS, said that they allow hands-on or “free contact” between elephants and staff (a contentious issue as elephants under these conditions are usually controlled using bull hooks), that they have good working relationships with both the AZA and circuses (in the context that they will work with whoever regarding elephants that need sanctuary), and that they provide elephant bull semen for the purposes of artificial insemination. Such breeding goes against what both PAWS and TES believe a sanctuary should be. “No true sanctuary should be involved in breeding or commercial exploitation of the animals in its care,” writes PAWS on their website. “They are being bred to be on exhibit for their entire life in zoos and circuses,” states The Elephant Sanctuary on theirs.
When asked by the Task Force what makes a sanctuary different from a zoo, Riddle replied, “It’s kind of semantics.” When both she and Lehnhardt were questioned about the need for AZA-affiliated elephants to go elsewhere besides a place like NEC, Lehnhardt said that he “didn’t know of any need.”
In case you’ve missed it, the entire point of the two hours of testimony thus far was to showcase both the AZA and Woodland Park Zoo’s program in the best possible light and, if in fact there was a recommendation to send the elephants to a sanctuary and WPZ agreed to do the same, there would still be no need to place Watoto, Bamboo, and Chai outside the AZA’s supervision as it could all be handled in-house with the NEC or another similarly associated “sanctuary.”
Nestled between Lehnhardt and Riddle’s testimony the third person asked to speak about sanctuaries was IDA’s Nicole Meyer, and it was obvious from the start that she had been offered the token “resistance” slot in the meeting. To her credit Meyer came out (politely) swinging. Thanking the Task Force for only giving her a few days to prepare, she immediately brought up that the day before the Task Force meeting the USDA had found Woodland Park Zoo in violation of the Animal Welfare Act for the death of a patas monkey this past February. Meyer then pointed out that numerous members of the Task Force were on the Zoo’s board of directors in a clear conflict of interest when assessing what’s best for the zoo’s elephants, before saying that groups like the IDA who want to see Watoto, Bamboo, and Chai go to a sanctuary are not calling for “an end to zoos,” rather that “some species don’t fare well in captivity.”
Around this point Task Force co-chair Jan Hendrickson – who, if you might remember, is a former chair of Woodland Park Zoo – interrupted to say that Meyer had been asked to testify about sanctuaries and the Task Force would appreciate it if she would limit her testimony to only that. Meyer responded by saying she was asked to give the IDA’s opinion, period, before continuing on by noting that of the 390 elephant deaths in zoos in the last fifty years most died from diseases related directly to their captivity. She said that the swaying exhibited by WPZ’s elephants was not because they were excited to be fed, as the Expert Panel claimed, rather that it was unnatural and a result of stress due to confinement.
Meyer then went on to question the earlier testimony of Kristin Vehrs, saying she was “shocked that it’s not known [by the AZA] how many elephants in zoos have TB” before listing several well known cases, including an incident at the St. Louis Zoo, while emphasizing the fact that the tuberculosis found in elephants in sanctuaries started with zoos and circuses in the first place. Along with TB, she continued, is the known presence of the herpes virus in zoo elephants, which was what killed Chai’s calf Hansa back in 2007.
Shifting to Woodland Park Zoo’s 112 failed attempts to impregnate Chai – yes, you read that correctly, 112 unsuccessful attempts by WPZ to artificially inseminate one of their elephants – Meyer said that “breeding elephants in zoos is reckless,” and that there’s been no measurable conservation benefit shown in doing so. “How many times does it take before you realize something isn’t working?” she asked.
Task Force member Jeff Leppo – a lawyer and also a member of Woodland Park Zoo’s Board of Directors – had just one line of questioning for Meyer. “Your personal background is in writing, editing, and producing media, is that right? And you don’t maintain that you’re an expert in elephant welfare or care? You’d agree that you’re not an expert?” Meyer deflected the overt attempt at character assassination as well as she could. But, like any good lawyer, the point of Leppo’s questioning wasn’t the answers. Rather, it was to plant the seed that Meyer wasn’t qualified to testify, and therefore her opinion had no merit or standing.