Zoo Moving Elephants After Keeper Is Crushed

London Zoo will move its elephants to a park in the countryside after a keeper was crushed to death, zoo officials said.

The transfer will leave the famed zoo without elephants for the first time in 170 years. Critics have said facilities at the zoo in London’s Regent’s Park are too cramped to keep the animals.

Keeper Jim Robson was trampled to death Oct. 20 after he tripped and fell into the elephant paddock. It was the third fatal accident involving elephants in Britain in less than two years.

The zoo’s three elephants will be moved to the Whipsnade Wild Animal Park in Bedfordshire, a move one official said had been in the works even before Robson’s death.