I’ve studied elephants for over 45 years. This is why I support their right to liberty.

My name is Keith Lindsay. I am a wildlife ecologist and conservation biologist who has studied elephant behavior and ecology, and practiced natural resource conservation and management, for over 45 years. Much of my work has been with elephants in their native habitats, primarily in Africa but more recently in Asia as well. My main focus of field research has been on the foraging ecology and demography of African savanna elephants in the well-studied population in Amboseli, southern Kenya, home of world-famous matriarch Echo. 

I have authored and co-authored numerous peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals, as well as chapters in books and reports on elephants in both the wild and captivity. Recent examples include Solitary Elephants in Japan (a survey of 14 Japanese zoos holding lone elephants) and Expansive, diverse habitats are vital to the welfare of elephants in captivity (a response to consultation by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Government of the United Kingdom when it was considering its policy towards captive elephants). I have also submitted affidavits in support of the NhRP’s lawsuit to free elephants from the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado, the Fresno Chaffee Zoo in California, and the Honolulu Zoo in Hawaii.

The NhRP and the experts like me who support NhRP’s lawsuits are attempting to get elephants released from zoos to sanctuaries. We are doing this for sound scientific as well as personal reasons. I have never been a big fan of zoos, although like many people I did visit the small collection in my home city of Vancouver as a child. While I was amused by some of the exhibited animals, I felt particularly sorry for the polar bear, who paced repeatedly, and was clearly disturbed and unhappy. I saw an Asian elephant for the first time in a circus and, again, while the tricks performed were amusing, the control of the wild animals for entertainment did not seem right to me, even then. 

My first experience with African savanna elephants was my introduction to them–and to Cynthia Moss, the Founder and Director of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project–in Kenya in the late 1970s, and I have never looked back. Some years later, I came across an African elephant in an American zoo for the first time, and I must admit I had a strong emotional response to the obese, lame and solitary female, a shadow of the free-ranging animals I had come to know. Coming face to face with that reality and, with the additional examples I have found in several different countries since then, I have become convinced that keeping elephants in zoos can have only serious, negative consequences for their welfare. 

What’s wrong with elephant exhibits

Zoos have been primarily entertainment venues since their origins as zoological gardens in the 19th century. Despite attempts at rebranding, zoos no longer provide any significant contribution to scientific research on elephants and do nothing to help their conservation in the wild. The people who manage and work in zoos appear to care about the elephants they keep, with much interventive husbandry and intensive veterinary treatment. But they also seem short-sighted, missing the point that the natural biology of wild animals should be the foundational basis for their living conditions; their adaptations to the ecosystems where they evolved dictate their requirements that can rarely, if ever, be met in (often) foreign captivity. 

Elephants in particular need large, ecologically diverse areas in which to forage; in the wild they spend three quarters of every day in the search for food, and cover an average of six miles of territory in so doing. Their annual ranges in African and Asia are hundreds to thousands of acres in size and may include rolling grasslands, woodlands, forests or wetlands. They have rich social lives, interacting with hundreds of different individuals over the course of a year. Adult females associate primarily with other related females and their juvenile offspring, but their networks extend to clans and range associates, while adult males live separately in multi-age groups and may join with the families from time to time to renew acquaintances, or for mating. They communicate through their well-developed senses of hearing and smell, and have behavioral repertoires encompassing hundreds of postures, gestures and vocalizations that carry meaning and provide evidence of their deep capacities for cognition and emotion. 

In complete contrast to elephants’ natural habitats. zoo exhibits are constrained by financial and logistical limitations, and designed for display to visitors and the practicalities of husbandry and hygiene. In consequence, and despite the millions of dollars that are lavished on their constructions, they are generally open, barren compounds of rarely more than two acres, where there is no challenge to elephants’ active minds, and little opportunity to move and maintain cardiovascular health. Zoos may provide so-called “enrichment,” which generally involves placing hay or other food items in hanging baskets or holes in walls, so that elephants need to spend more time obtaining the morsels on offer. The fact that zoos perceive a need to provide such minimal foraging challenges is a clear admission that their living conditions are, in fact, impoverished, offering little stimulation for elephants’ active minds. In most temperate country zoos, elephants are kept in small stalls for a large portion of every day, and even longer during winters. A majority of zoos are in cities, where the urban surroundings generate noise and disturbance, and constrain the space available to the captive animals. 

The confinement and sterility of zoo compounds, and the total lack of autonomy over daily activities and sociality, are deeply depressing for elephants and make them physically ill. Common conditions for elephants that have no option but to stand continuously on hard substrates are arthritis, other bone and joint disorders, and damaged feet. Obesity due to overfeeding and lack of exercise can add to these musculo-skeletal problems as well as heart and lung weakness or disorders. Additionally, the psychological trauma of the impoverished habitat and social conditions, as well as a lack of choice or agency, leads to brain damage that gives rise to the stereotypical swaying and head-bobbing that is seen in many zoo elephants, but never in wild elephants. Their behavior can become aggressive, towards keeping staff and their fellow captives, and because of the constrained space, there is often no escape for victims. Diseases that are minimal or unknown in wild elephants, including TB and herpes virus, are common and often fatal in zoos. 

The humane alternatives to zoos

The humane alternatives to zoos are sanctuaries, which are designed for the well-being of the animals themselves, rather than for the entertainment of a visiting public. They provide elephants with orders of magnitude more space than zoos, and with pastures where natural foraging can occupy them for hours every day. They also provide them with the potential for a healthier social environment, where choice of association or avoidance of companions is possible. Although elephants may carry with them the “baggage” of trauma that was expressed as aggressive, antisocial behavior or listlessness in zoos, they have, with time, transformed into calm and socially integrated individuals at a sanctuary. The entire philosophy of a sanctuary is to provide elephants with the freedom and autonomy to “just be elephants,” and the translation of these principles to practice is well-established by sanctuary professionals.

The Honolulu Zoo is a glaring example of the worst in zoo design and management. The zoo site was established in 1916 in Queen Kapiʻolani Park near Waikiki Beach and a “master plan” was developed in 1974 that determined the boundaries of the present 42-acre site. The location indicates that the primary purpose of the zoo is public entertainment. It is flanked by the high-density complex of apartment towers and tourist hotels a few hundred yards away on the Waikiki waterfront, with a housing development only 325 yards away to the east and a concert venue, the Tom Moffat Waikiki Shell, some 200 yards to south. The latter setting hosts musical and other events for thousands of visitors, occurring regularly in the daytime and evenings throughout the year. There are busy roads running past the zoo and elephant exhibit at all these boundaries.

The elephant exhibit was redeveloped and reopened in 2010 and covers little more than one acre, including the two small (less than half an acre each) outdoor compounds, management areas, and small barn. The compounds have hard packed soil, flat terrain, shallow ponds and landscaping that is decorative for visitors but meaningless to the two female Asian elephants held there. They are kept in their tiny indoor stalls for over half of every day, allowed into the outdoor areas only when staff members come on shift. These elephants, Mari (now aged 48) and Vaigai (aged 38) have lived there for the many decades since they were taken from their native India as juveniles in 1982 and 1992 respectively. The only other elephant to live there in recent times was a female calf who died in 1987 after one year at the zoo.   

It is clear to me in my professional opinion that the facilities and their management at the Honolulu Zoo fall far short of fulfilling the physical and psychological needs of the two elephants, including the need to exercise their autonomy, in both indoor and outdoor facilities. There is no question that they should be moved, as soon as possible, to a “rewilding” facility in their native Asia or, if that is not possible, to a suitable elephant sanctuary in the United States. If the zoo management, which is controlled by the City & County of Honolulu, is not willing to do this voluntarily, then this action must be compelled through the courts. 

Elephants need the right to liberty

Courts are already willing to grant legal rights to some nonhuman entities, such as rivers, forests and corporations, but up to now they have been reluctant to do the same for nonhuman animals. However, it is clear that elephants are autonomous individuals who deserve the right to liberty just as we do, and it is past time that this right is recognized under the law. Without the right to liberty, elephants cannot have their rights defended in court, and they will continue to be exploited by humans for profit while denied any semblance of a reasonable life. It is for these reasons that I support the NhRP’s work, and I encourage everyone who cares about elephants to support them too.