In some areas of Africa, wildlife managers say there are too many elephants. Isn’t it better to send elephants to zoos rather than to kill them?
We wish that we could ask the elephants this question. If we could, we’re not sure what they would answer. But even without the elephants’ input, the answer isn’t as simple as it sounds. South Africa is currently talking about culling again – 5,000 elephants in Kruger National Park alone. All the zoos in the world couldn’t accommodate that many elephants, and even if they could, what would happen next time Kruger decided it had “too many elephants”? Secondly, zoos don’t really want wild adult elephants – they are simply too difficult to handle and not sweet enough for the spectators. This means that, the adults (mothers, aunts and grandmothers) and older juveniles (older siblings) would be killed and butchered for the meat canning factory and the ivory market, while the babies would be tied to their dead mothers until they could be rounded up and trucked off. Believe us when we tell you that this is not a pretty sight. And we now have good reason to believe that the experience for the
