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Funny that Leppo didn’t ask the same question of AZA’s Kristin Vehrs, who herself has no formal scientific background in elephant welfare or care. In fact, her LinkedIn page lists her education as “BA, Spanish, Business, and French.” Using Leppo’s standard for witness expertise, Vehrs is just as unqualified on the subject of elephant welfare – as is the majority of the Task Force itself.
And that pretty much has been the playbook all along. Claim everything is fine and good. When questioned by an upset public, create your own panel. Pad that panel with your own “experts,” while the rest is made up of well meaning and intelligent people but who have little or no background or expertise in the matter. Call your friends to testify on your behalf, but also invite a few from the other side to participate in limited fashion. Then have your inside men discredit them.
Near the end of Meyer’s Q&A co-chair Jeff Manning said the following: “I haven’t read the articles that you’ve submitted, and I haven’t read anything else about this notion that I have in my head about zoos and that they are building constituencies. I’m basing [this] purely on my own life experience and on my visit to the Woodland Park Zoo elephant facility. There was a bunch of school groups walking through the zoo that day and group after group of these kids would come rushing up to the [elephant] barn. I had a view of their faces as they came up to it, and I just don’t think you see that look on a kid’s face when they’re looking at a video, or a computer screen, or even an IMAX. So I haven’t read anything. I haven’t read any of the data either way, and it’s important, obviously, that I do. Is it your view that my gut reaction to the impact of seeing a live animal right there in front of me really doesn’t create a constituency, that [it] isn’t really important?”
Besides the fact that the co-chair of the Elephant Task Force had, now two meetings and several months into the panel, admitted to not really reading anything on the subject yet, his remarks highlight what is so very wrong about this issue, how it’s perceived, and how it’s being addressed. That smiles on kids faces make up for the fact that sentient beings are kept in captivity for our amusement at the expense of their health, well being, souls even; and that those smiles are themselves an act of conservation. That, as I’ve said for some time now, to “save them we must enslave them” is a perfectly reasonable approach to justifying elephants in captivity. That Manning’s “gut reaction” is a measurable means of determining Watoto, Bamboo, and Chai’s future.
Thankfully, Meyer came to the rescue to anyone still paying attention. “What the kids are seeing in zoos is not a true representation of what an elephant is. Elephants in the wild will move and interact. They’re very dynamic individuals, yet in captivity and here at the Woodland Park Zoo what [kids] are seeing are basically shells of what [elephants] would be like in the wild. And I question what that teaches our children.”
I realize this has been a lengthy piece to merely cover one meeting that’s part of a longer, ongoing process. It’s an approach I hope to avoid while writing about other meetings and updates related to this issue. However, I feel it’s important to try to give some background and context to what has gone on and provide some understanding to the seemingly insurmountable task faced in giving Watoto, Bamboo, Chai, and all other elephants and other mistreated animals in captivity, the freedom to roam and be who they are rather than being used as window dressing to bring in profit under the guise of conservation. Well into the 21st century it’s past time we began moving beyond the Dark Ages in regards to our lack of understanding and empathy, and the willful arrogance we show other sentient species with whom we share this planet with.
To the right of this article in the sidebar are several embedded videos courtesy Friends of Woodland Park Zoo Elephants, highlighting some of the very real physical and emotional trauma Watoto, Bamboo, and Chai experience on a daily basis. Along with those videos are links to several articles worth reading – in particular the aforementioned and excellent “Glamour Beasts” by Seattle Times reporter Michael J. Berens, and “The Future of Zoos,” a speech David Hancocks gave last year at Town Hall Seattle. An outspoken critic of the continued captivity of elephants in zoos, Hancocks is the former director of the Woodland Park Zoo and, as such, has a unique insight into both the elephants and the elephant program there.
Take the time, read the materials, educate yourselves, and challenge assumptions. Then stand up and make a difference, however small.
Spend even fifteen minutes watching the elephants – mostly immobile or swaying stereotypically in repetitious actions that reveal trauma, distress and altered emotional states, rarely interacting with each other – and the falsity of the zoo’s claims that all is well are evident.
-David Hancocks, Woodland Park Zoo Director (1976-1984)