In a victory for captive elephants, Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo announced this week that it will finally be closing its controversial elephant exhibit. Now advocates for the zoo’s two remaining residents remain concerned about plans to relocate them to another zoo instead of a sanctuary.

The zoo has faced serious criticism for its elephant program over the years, with elephant advocates, and organizations including In Defense of Animals (IDA) and Friends of Woodland Park Zoo Elephants, arguing that the elephants there all suffer from both physical and psychological problems as a result of captivity and being kept in an inappropriate climate in an outdated enclosure that’s too small for them. Last year, the zoo appeared on IDA’s list of the Ten Worst Zoos for Elephants for the seventh time.

Despite the ongoing issues and a scathing investigation by the Seattle Times, the zoo continued to defend its program and announced a misguided plan last year to modify the facility, which was built in 1989, and add yet more elephants – one of two options which were presented by an Elephant Task Force.

Scrutiny and criticism only heightened this summer after the death of Watoto, the zoo’s only African elephant who had been on display there for more than four decades.

Her tragic death left behind two Asian elephants – Bamboo, 47, and Chai, 35 – whose advocates renewed calls to have them moved to a sanctuary.

Those calls were followed by even more trouble this fall when the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) cited the facility for violations of the Animal Welfare Act that concern housing for locking Bamboo and Chai outside with no access to shelter and using a system that left them isolated from each other.

Thankfully the zoo has changed its tune with its announcement and recognized that its plan to expand was, in the words of the zoo’s President and CEO Dr. Deborah Jensen, “not realistic in the foreseeable future.”

While many people, including Mayor Ed Murray and City Council Member Sally Bagshaw, are applauding the long overdue move to close the exhibit, Bamboo and Chai’s advocates have raised concerns that the zoo will stubbornly squander the chance to do the right thing by moving them to another zoo, which will not do anything to improve their lives or welfare.

The zoo hasn’t chosen where the two will go yet, but it did say in a statement that they would both be moved to another zoo sometime next year that is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

While the zoo is insisting that the elephants come first, it still says that sanctuaries don’t share its mission of education and conservation and that elephants need to be on display to get the public to care.

But it’s not Bamboo or Chai’s job to make us care about wildlife or conservation, or to ensure we have a population of captive elephants in zoos. It is their job to be elephants and after all this time confined in Seattle for the public to see, the least the zoo could do is recognize that and allow them to go to an environment where they can live out their days doing whatever they want.

“They have earned the right to retire to a warm, sunny location where they can be on elephant time and do elephant things,” said Lisa Kane, a member of Friends of Woodland Park Zoo Elephants told the Seattle Times.

The organization, which plans to urge local officials to intervene, added in a statement:

The Mayor and City Council have the authority to approve or disapprove the disposition of the animals in the zoo. We are asking that they use their authority to require that Bamboo and Chai go to a facility accredited by the Global Federation of Sanctuaries like PAWS―anything less goes against science and their constituents’ values.

 TAKE ACTION!

Please sign and share the petition urging Seattle officials to step in and do the right thing for Bamboo and Chai by ensuring they’re moved to a sanctuary where they can live out their days in peace.