Students Accuse Zoo of Abusing Elephants

What began as a frivolous field trip to the Los Angeles Zoo and evolved into a fanciful campaign by Santa Monica schoolchildren to replace live elephants there with a computerized exhibit has taken a serious turn with allegations of animal abuse.

Teenagers at the Crossroads and New Roads schools say that internal zoo memos and veterinary reports leaked to them contain evidence of animal handlers hitting the elephants and, in one case, seriously injuring one. The youngsters are asking for a district attorney’s office investigation.

Zoo officials deny any wrongdoing with the four elephants at their popular Griffith Park pachyderm enclosure and say they welcome outside scrutiny. The district attorney’s office said it will launch a probe if the youngsters ask for one in writing.

Middle school and high school pupils at the two private schools said Thursday that they will supply investigators with copies of documents anonymously sent to them that relate to rectal injuries suffered in mid-1996 by Tara, a female African elephant.

A medical report written by former longtime zoo veterinarian Gary Kuehn suggested that the wounds were the apparent result of Tara being struck by a “bull hook” in her rectum.

Kuehn, of Newhall, retired two years ago because of a medical disability caused by a 20-foot fall in a chimp cage. This week, he said he stands behind the report and the follow-up memos he wrote to zoo officials about handlers’ treatment of elephants.

But zoo Director Manuel Mollinedo and chief veterinarian Dr. Charles Sedgwick said Wednesday that the cause of Tara’s rectal injury remains unknown.

“We investigated the matter and we could never find any fault with the staff,” Mollinedo said of Kuehn’s assertion.

Sedgwick said he told Kuehn at the time there was no hard evidence that the hook caused the injury. “I said if that’s all you have, you have no right to put in an animal’s health record something you can’t substantiate.”

An infection caused by the injury--whatever its cause--took its toll on Tara, who was then 31 and weighed 4 tons. She lost about 1,000 pounds before collapsing in mid-1977 outside her barn. Los Angeles firefighters had to use a crane to lift her to her feet.

In his memos, Kuehn asserted that elephant keepers had previously been observed striking the animals with “repeated, full-force whacks” and grabbing at elephants’ rectal areas with the hook-topped sticks--commonly used by circus elephant trainers and handlers.

According to Kuehn, he wrote the medical report after receiving an independent lab analysis of Tara’s injuries that stated they could have been caused by “some form of trauma” or “penetrating wound.”

He said he wrote the follow-up memos after zoo officials chastised him for mentioning the bull hook in his medical report.

Along with conventional cruelty-to-animals statutes, state law specifically bans any form of elephant abuse--including insertion of “any instrument into any bodily orifice.”

At the two schools, students have organized themselves into a 40-member club called Elefriends. They recounted Thursday how they came up with the idea to move the elephants to an outside sanctuary and be replaced by a “virtual reality” exhibit after a 1998 field trip to the zoo that was followed the next day by a trip to see a movie about wild elephants.

“We love the zoo. But it was clear to us that the zoo is too small for huge animals like elephants,” said Crossroads sophomore Sam King, 15, who is president of Elefriends.

Although the zoo commission last year brushed aside the cyber-elephant display idea, King said students had a cordial relationship with zoo operators until the documents arrived in the mail.

As for Tara, she is still being treated for lingering effects of the infection, although officials said she is gaining weight and seems now to have a more mellow disposition.

The only setback came March 26. That’s when the end of Tara’s trunk was accidentally chopped off.

“Tara caught her trunk in an hydraulic door and four inches were nipped off. I’m surprised the students didn’t mention that,” Sedgwick said.

“She’s completely healed now.”