Elephant Keepers Question Training : Hands-on Tactics Debated in Wake of San Diego, S. F. Beating Incidents

When the nation’s elephant keepers assembled Thursday for the opening of their annual conference, they were greeted with an unsettling question.

“Why do we have our hands on these animals?” asked Dale Tuttle, host of the conference and director of the Jacksonville Zoo. The specter of the “gentle giants” being “whacked and prodded” by their keepers is becoming increasingly unacceptable to the public, Tuttle told the uneasy crowd. Perhaps, Tuttle suggested, the group should consider whether hands-off elephant management is a better idea.

Such a notion would have been unthinkable to the group only a year ago, and in fact was rejected by nearly all of the 180 zoo keepers and private elephant owners who attended the ninth annual Elephant Workshop. Strong-willed and opinionated, some elephant keepers define their place in the social order by the degree to which they can control the beasts.

Growing Uncertainty

But the fact that the question was asked at all reflects the uncertainty that has developed during a year of controversy over the handling and discipline of captive elephants.

The issue of how best to care for the Earth’s largest land animal has taken on increasing urgency in recent years with the classification of Asian elephants as an endangered species and Africans as the less urgent category of “threatened.” Some keepers say the last refuge for the animals may be North American zoos, where captive-breeding programs may keep them from the edge of extinction.

But serious questions about the abilities and philosophies of elephant handlers emerged this week as the American Assn. of Zoological Parks and Aquariums began the first thorough reassessment of the handling of captive elephants in this country.

Closed-Door Sessions

As the keepers met for workshops and scientific presentations, an AAZPA task force held closed-door sessions in a nearby room, conducting interviews late into the night in an attempt to assess the state of knowledge and expertise at facilities around the country.

“It ranges from people who don’t know what they’re doing, period, to those who are very knowledgeable and tuned in to the elephants,” Tuttle said late Saturday.

Over the next several months, Tuttle told the group, the committee plans to consult some outside specialists including horse, cat and marine mammal trainers, human psychologists, physical therapists, and even child abuse specialists before returning to the AAZPA with a plan for the future of elephant care.

“This is the quietest elephant group I’ve ever been in front of, and I’m worried,” Tuttle said. The heightened concern about captive elephants was prompted largely by two incidents that occurred in California earlier this year.

One involved an elephant called Dunda, which was transferred from the San Diego Zoo to the San Diego Wild Animal Park last February. Keepers at the zoo allege that at the park Dunda was brutally and unnecessarily chained by all four legs, pulled to the ground and beaten on the head with ax handles. Officials of the Zoological Society of San Diego conceded that the incident happened, but asserted that the beating was necessary to bring a dangerous animal under control.

The other incident involved an elephant called Tinkerbelle at the San Francisco Zoo that attacked and injured a keeper. Allegations later surfaced that Tinkerbelle had been abused.

The incidents prompted objections from animal-rights groups including the Humane Society for the United States, which issued a statement to the conference calling for some radical changes in elephant care.

If elephants must be beaten and hit to be kept in captivity, “then the time has come to begin the phasing out of elephants in the United States,” said the statement, written by David Herbet, the group’s captive-wildlife specialist. He also said the society opposes the use of elephants in shows or rides for the general public as well as in traveling animal acts and circuses.

“These rides and exhibits serve no educational value whatsoever,” Herbet said.

For the zoo keepers and private owners, some of whom use elephants in carnival-like productions, the demands added pressure in an already difficult year.

“They feel under the gun,” said John Lehnhardt, manager of the elephant collection at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. “The AAZPA committee is here interviewing virtually everybody at this conference about their method of handling elephants and they’re doing that because they are getting pressure.

“For those of us from zoos, there’s pressure from our administrations to come up with a handle for this potential problem that they see. I think they are worried, like San Francisco and San Diego, that they would come under tremendous public scrutiny about how they are they handling their animals.”

Lehnhardt--a member of the elephant handlers’ steering committee that organizes the workshop each year--added that the controversy may have been a catalyst that prompted the handlers to formally organize this year. The group decided by a show of hands Saturday to incorporate and adopt by-laws intended to give them greater clout with zoo officials.

“This is the first time this group has ever decided to do anything,” Lehnhardt said.

The organization also is intended to be a resource for keepers to contact when they encounter problems with their charges.

“It’s a very good idea for us to sit down together,” Lehnhardt said. “A little scrutiny doesn’t hurt. It’s another stimulus to make sure we’re doing the job as best we can. I think this focused in people’s minds that we really need to help each other.”