To Protect and Love Animals, We Must First Experience Them : Zoos: They serve to educate and conserve wildlife, in as natural a habitat as possible.

At the same time as the tragic death of Hannibal the elephant was occurring, a California condor was hatched at the Los Angeles Zoo--the zoo’s first chick of 1992--bringing the current world population to 55.

This condor’s birth challenges us to protect and develop a better and safer world for its eventual return to the wild. Hannibal’s death teaches us how much more we have to learn. While I would hate to live in a world where the death of an elephant is not a tragedy, I protest those who in the shadow of his death use it to enhance their very narrow and, in some cases, self-serving causes.

The Los Angeles Zoo had a contract with Hannibal when he came to the zoo 12 years ago; it was to protect his future welfare. This meant recognizing when for his own welfare, living at the Los Angeles Zoo was no longer tolerable. His own actions of tearing his 20-foot-high by 10-foot-wide by 2-inch-thick steel door off the hinges in the nine weeks before the attempt to move him--putting himself and people at mortal risk--made this conclusion self-evident.

Once it was acknowledged that a better environment could not be constructed at the zoo, it became our responsibility as zoo professionals to relocate him to a safer and more humane environment.

Critics argue that his death demonstrates why we should not have elephants in zoos or, for that matter, have zoos at all. I argue that his death instead emphasizes how much more we need to know and how, more than ever, we must find the resources to put our ever-growing base of knowledge into practice.

During the same week that Hannibal died, Tanzania dropped its ban on public hunting of elephants by tourists. We rely heavily on our zoos as institutions dedicated to the safekeeping of invaluable animal species and as leaders in the field of conservation and environmental education. To assert that animals will be better off if left to themselves is to ignore the fact that we, as a species, are not only responsible for developing endangered species lists, but it is by our actions that animals have become threatened with extinction.

More than 100 million people visit zoos and aquariums in North America annually, 19.7 million in California alone. One out of every five schoolchildren attended a zoo education program last year, including more than 400,000 at the Los Angeles Zoo. Do we really want to consider abandoning these institutions?

Zoos have changed enormously in the past two decades. They have evolved from institutions in which animals were exhibited in sterile cages to facilities resembling the natural habitats of their residents. As zoos have replaced cages with habitats, the cost, expertise and containment issues have geometrically increased. All for good reason, as zoos are dedicated to the humane care of animals in natural settings. Zoos also actively take part in appropriate propagation programs and work to instill a conservation ethic in the visitor within the context of an affordable, enjoyable and exciting experience. In their most vital role, zoos can save a species from extinction and eventually return it to the wild, as we have witnessed with the California condor.

When we suffer the tragic loss of an animal in spite of using the best professional judgment, we must examine the circumstances and learn from them. Occasionally, this calls for the input of an independent expert review panel. The solution is not to call for the closing of all zoos or for unprofessional, unscientific evaluations conducted by those with predetermined agendas.

If we want future generations to conserve and protect their natural resources, including wildlife, we must teach our children to understand and love the animals with which we share this planet. To understand and love something, one must first experience it. Therein lies the role of zoos and the lesson that Hannibal’s death and the condor’s birth teaches us.