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Survival stakes in captivity

Cornelia Dean

Debate over critical report on the health and life-span of zoo elephants

New York: Living in a zoo drastically shortens the lives of Asian and African elephants, possibly because of the effects of stress and obesity, researchers have reported. But their work provoked a sharp response from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

The researchers, who studied data from European zoos, are not recommending that zoos abandon elephants, said Georgia J. Mason, a leader of the work and an expert on animal behaviour at the University of Guelph, in Ontario.

But she said their findings suggested that imports of elephants should be limited to zoos that can identify and treat their problems, that transfers between zoos be minimised and that breeding efforts be limited to zoos with a record of success.

“Currently zoos are consumers rather than producers of elephants,” Ms. Mason said. “We feel that’s not really appropriate.”

Paul Boyle, the senior vice president for conservation and education at the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, based in Silver Spring, Maryland, called the work “terribly flawed” and said it reflected an anti-zoo agenda.

He said he could not recall “the last time elephants were imported into the U.S. for a zoo. I cannot speak for other countries, but that is not true of the United States.” And he said the researchers’ mortality comparisons did not take adequate account of wild elephants killed by people.

The researchers said it had long been known that zoo-raised elephants were at risk of becoming overweight or falling prey to behavioural disturbances, infanticide, foot trouble and diseases like herpes and tuberculosis.

Activist groups, citing these issues, have urged that elephant conservation efforts be limited to maintaining elephant populations in the wild.

The new analysis, based on data on more than 4,500 elephants, most of them female, shows that “bringing elephants into zoos profoundly impairs their viability,” the researchers said.

The researchers, from Guelph, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and elsewhere, report their findings in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

The new report draws on data from 1960 to 2005 on African and Asian elephants in European zoos, African elephants (Loxodonta africana) from Amboseli National Park in Kenya and Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) used in the Myanma Timber Enterprise, the agency of the government of Myanmar that deals with the lumber harvest and sale.

Excluding premature and still births, researchers calculated the median life span of zoo-born African elephants at 16.9 years, compared with 56.0 years for animals in the park. Survival of African elephants in zoos has improved in recent years, they said, but mortality rates for elephants in zoos are still substantially higher.

Comparison

Median life-span for Asian elephants in zoos was 18.9 years, the researchers said, compared with 41.7 years for elephants used in the timber trade.

They further noted that for Asian elephants, infant mortality rates were far higher in zoos, a problem they said had “not significantly improved over time.”

But Mr. Boyle, an environmental biologist, said the idea that infant mortality had not improved was “just not right,” and he was critical of the researchers’ use of data going back to 1960.

“If you were looking at the success of heart transplants and you reached back 48 years, you would be obviously biasing the success rate,” he said.

Knowledge of nutrition, behaviour and other factors, he said, “has improved in the zoo community, just like every other profession.”

Ms. Mason said more research was needed to determine what factors contribute to survival of zoo elephants. For example, she said it remained to be determined if large enclosures were crucial or whether social factors, like transfers, were more important.

But Mr. Boyle said errors in the paper were so “flagrant” that he had complained to the editors of Science. “I wanted to let them know that they would draw a sharp response from professionals in this community,” he said. — New York Times News Service

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