Trainers Try Tenderness in Handling Elephants...

A year after one of its elephant keepers was killed, the San Diego Wild Animal Park is trumpeting a radically new method of handling elephants, by training them to respond voluntarily to commands from keepers on the other side of a steel fence.

The new system, based on Sea World’s training methods for whales that rely exclusively on a positive-reward system, augurs a new era in the 4,500-year-old relationship between man and the largest of land mammals.

Literally, the carrot is replacing the stick.

But, although the technique all but guarantees safety of elephant keepers, who work in one of the most dangerous professions, the keepers themselves vehemently argue that it takes the heart out of their job and jeopardizes the elephants’ own welfare.

“Protected custody would be much easier for us, less stressful, Easy Street,” acknowledged elephant keeper Bethany Smith. “But, because we care about the elephants, we’re willing to take the risks.”

Keepers say that only through unrestricted contact can they best nurture their elephants--and, when necessary, serve as the herd’s most dominant member and referee, through the use of the ankus, the wooden bat used for thousands of years to mete out pachyderm punishment. Besides, they say, what about emergencies and other situations that require a keeper in the yard? The elephants no longer would be accustomed to their presence.

The issue pits traditional animal keepers at the world-renowned Wild Animal Park against the park management’s new philosophy, and brings to focus the hottest issue now before the zoo industry nationwide: should keepers have free and unprotected access to elephants, or should they minister to their animals through steel bars?

The Wild Animal Park says the new technique not only will keep the keepers safe, but also will accommodate the shrinking pool of experienced elephant handlers and forestall charges of animal mistreatment.

Many zoos in the nation already have introduced “protected contact” elephant management, in which feistier animals are brought into small constraint devices, nicknamed elephant squeezes, as part of their daily regimen.

Once contained, the animal is tended to by keepers on the other side of steel bars, while generously rewarded with a steady stream of carrots and apples. But, in fact, the elephant couldn’t thumb its nose and leave, even if it wanted to.

Despite their reputation as gentle giants, elephants can turn rebellious without provocation, whacking trainers with their trunks, butting them with their heads, or trampling them, leading to serious injuries or death, elephant managers said. Other elephant keepers have been killed simply for unwittingly being caught between two tussling elephants, which is how Wild Animal Park elephant keeper Pam Orsi was killed March 14 of last year.

Government statistics compiled by John Lehnardt of the National Zoological Park in Washington show that, per capita, elephant keeping is more dangerous than coal mining, police work and firefighting. Of the 600 elephant handlers in the United States, the job has proved fatal to 15 during the past 15 years, he said.

The Wild Animal Park is modifying its own elephant barns and yards to incorporate the “protected contact” scheme, at a cost of more than $1 million.

But it also is taking elephant management a precedent-setting step further.

The Wild Animal Park has begun teaching its elephants to voluntarily approach a customized gate where they can be groomed, medicated or otherwise tended by keepers on the other side of the steel barrier. For its obedience and cooperation, the elephant is rewarded with food; if it refuses or misbehaves, its recalcitrance goes unpunished.

After nine months of training, the 10,000-pound African bull elephant Chico--the most cantankerous of the park’s 16 elephants and one deemed too dangerous to allow any direct human contact unless tranquilized--is testimony to the new program.

Given verbal commands and the signals with foam-tipped sticks called targets--the equivalent to the hand signs given performing killer whales at marine parks--Chico will put either of his front feet through an open portal for grooming, or press his face against a higher opening for eye medication, or flap his ear through the opening so blood can be drawn.

As one keeper tends to Chico, another one tosses him apples and carrots. If Chico were to walk away from the fence, so be it. No hard feelings.

Chico now is learning to put his back feet through the holes in the gate, and came close to obeying one recent day. He got apples for his effort.

“Elephants are the best animals I’ve ever worked with,” said Gary Priest, the Wild Animal Park’s animal behaviorist. Years ago, at Sea World, he helped train the original Shamu killer whale for performances, using the same techniques that he is now applying to elephants.

“Elephants are intelligent, social, and they’re a bottomless pit for treats. They’ll eat and eat and eat, and never get tired for more rewards.”

Jennine Antrim, who also spent 15 years at Sea World before joining the Wild Animal Park, added: “It takes one or two or three years to get close to an elephant through the use of an ankus, versus what I can do in a month with this program.”

If the park’s work succeeds, its animal behaviorists will have revolutionized a 4,500-year-old training tradition that relied on the ankus to make 8,000-pound animals obey puny human beings. Ancient documents tell of men in India thousands of years ago domesticating elephants as beasts of burden--containing them in large pens and controlling them through the expert use of the ankus.

“Some of those same handling techniques are still used today. There’s a long, historical attachment toward the elephant-keeping profession,” said Dale Tuttle, who heads the species survival program for elephants on behalf of the American Assn. of Zoological Parks and Aquariums (AAFPA).

“I personally like the human-animal contact,” Tuttle said. “When you see a man or woman with the talent to manage an elephant, working together, it’s a fine pairing that brings a lump to my throat.”

Traditionalists say the need for keepers to work side-by-side with their charges in the open field transcends just romantic, aesthetic notions of man and animal working in unison.

They need to get into the yards for work with elephants too sick or injured to get to the gate, they say. They can detect and treat skin, foot and other medical problems, and injuries caused during elephant fights, most quickly in the open field, they say. In a free-contact system, they add, a newborn calf can be protected from its startled mother if keepers are there to separate the two. And open contact puts them in the best position to temper elephant dynamics that can be upset by a newcomer to the group or by an upstart elephant.

Tuttle said: “What if an animal freaks out? What do you do? A lot of times, the elephant will rely on the calmness of the keeper alongside him.”

Park managers respond that, in the most extreme scenario where a sick or injured elephant in the enclosure needs direct contact with a keeper but can’t or won’t make its way to the protected-contact gate, keepers can lure the other animals back to their barn and then tend the one elephant.

If a cow giving birth reacts badly to its new calf, the Animal Park would rather lose the calf than risk the keeper’s life by intervening, said Randy G. Rieches, the curator of mammals at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

“They feel like they’re relinquishing control. We see it as eliminating risk,” Rieches said of the debate.

Wild Animal Park elephant keeper Steve Cunningham said that, through free contact with the elephants, they come to learn--and respond to--a keeper’s voice.

“They get excited, and we talk to them, and they settle down,” he said. “What happens if we’re not out there any more? They won’t respond to our voices. We’ll no longer be dominant if we’re on the other side of the bars.”

Alan Roocroft, the director of the Wild Animal Park’s elephant program, acknowledges being a traditionalist and says he also worries about how herd dynamics will play out with no keepers in the enclosure to temper the herd.

But he says he’s interested in pursuing this new line of elephant management “if it betters the lot of elephants in captivity. The industry needs to look at different options,” he said.

Tuttle agrees. “There are some dyed-in-the-wool elephant managers . . . but, hey, aren’t we more intelligent than to keep throwing people into the pits?”

The Wild Animal Park was already considering the protected contact philosophy last year, when Orsi was trampled by an elephant charging another elephant.

Orsi’s death was “the flash point that made us look” at new elephant management techniques, said Jeff Jouett, spokesman for the San Diego Zoological Society, which operates both the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the San Diego Zoo.

Several months earlier, an animal behavior consultant already had knocked on the animal park’s door, proposing his notion that, just as marine animals like Shamu can be trained through positive-reinforcements, so too could elephants.

“A person comes up to you and says, ‘I can offer you a method that will not eliminate, but severely take away, most of the risk from keeping elephants in captivity.’ That perked my ears,” Rieches said.

“Then he said, ‘I can give you a situation where you will not have to do anything as far as negative reinforcement with the animals, to get them to do what you want them to do.’ That sold me.”

The image-conscious Wild Animal Park was wide open to the suggestion. It had reeled from negative publicity after elephant keepers in 1988 had punished one of their elephants, Dunda, with the ankus. Although the AAFPA, San Diego city attorney’s office and the San Diego Humane Society ruled that the beatings were not excessive, the U.S. Department of Agriculture scolded the Wild Animal Park for its treatment of Dunda.

In 1989, elephant keeper David SaoMarcos suffered a broken collarbone and other injuries when an elephant attacked and threw him against a wall like a rag doll.

A videotape of the incident, recorded by a tourist, showed SaoMarcos cleaning the yard when the elephant charged him. He tried to dodge the animal by crawling beneath other elephants, then ran toward the other side of a large gate.

As he tried to close the gate, the charging elephant rammed it, throwing SaoMarcos through the air and skidding into a wall. The elephant then began to head-butt the keeper, who struggled to scramble to the bottom of a dry concrete moat, where his cries of pain and pleas for help were audible. The elephant didn’t pursue SaoMarcos into the moat, and other keepers rushed to his side.

The park said after the SaoMarcos incident that the elephant might have turned on the keeper because, earlier that day, SaoMarcos had disciplined her, and she was reasserting herself. SaoMarcos has since sued the San Diego Zoological Society over his injuries.

In addition to the risk to the keeper’s safety, many zoos--including the Wild Animal Park--complain that many of today’s keepers are too young and inexperienced to exert control over elephants. Many experts say a keeper needs more than five years’ apprenticeship, yet most of the keepers at the Wild Animal Park have five years or less of experience with elephants.

After the Dunda incident, five of the park’s most experienced elephant keepers moved to other departments, prompted by acts of vandalism against them by animal activists protesting Dunda’s treatment.

“We’re no longer getting the longtime elephant handlers from the circuses deciding to settle down and get a job at the local zoo,” Tuttle said. “Instead, we’re getting a lot of inexperienced young people who want to take care of elephants but don’t have the skill.”

Portland’s Washington Park Zoo, the most successful in the nation in breeding elephants, was the first zoo to incorporate protected-contact techniques with the elephant squeeze in 1980.

But, even at that zoo, said Assistant Curator Mike Keele, animal keepers still have free contact with some elephants.

Both keepers and elephants prosper with free contact, Keel said.

“It’s a caring relationship. They know what the animals will do for them, and the animal knows what the keeper will do,” Keele said. “It’s a wonderful experience, and keepers cherish it. There is a fear that (with protected contact), those relationships will become a robotic, remote relationship.”

The Los Angeles Zoo allows its keepers to have free contact with its six female elephants, although there is no direct contact with the two bulls, said spokeswoman Lora LaMarca.

The zoo “is familiar, and is looking into, what’s being done in San Diego. We’re certainly looking at other techniques,” she said.

The Wild Animal Park’s own sister, the San Diego Zoo, will continue allowing free contact between keepers and elephants until the new program at the animal park is far enough along to be assessed, Jouett said.

The Humane Society of the United States is leaning toward total opposition to keeping elephants in captivity, period, said Mike Winikoff, but short of that, supports the idea of using only positive reinforcement.