The African elephant in this picture lives alone in freezing temperatures at Taiyuan Zoo in China.
People are
kidnapping young elephants from a national reserve in Zimbabwe and shipping them to China to sell to zoos.
These people aren’t poachers. They are Zimbabwean government officials.
Zimbabwe’s national parks are
hurting for money
— they ”have been unable to pay the wages of employees the past few
months,” and Chinese zoos “pay handsomely” for the young elephants.
Nevertheless the parks authority “is understood to have been against the
deal,” and government veterinarians who examined the Chinese zoos found
them inadequate, according to
The Scotsman. Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe allegedly made a “covert deal” to sell the elephants to the Chinese.
The
36-hour trip to China is traumatic for the juvenile animals and sometimes kills them. One of four young elephants flown to China in
November 2012 “died soon after its long and difficult journey,” the
Global Post reports. “The elephants arrived in late November, during a winter of record cold temperatures.”
After that death,
activists lobbied
Zimbabwe’s government not to ship off another five calves whom
authorities had already captured. The activists succeeded in persuading
officials to release the five youth back into the wild, though by that
time their
families could not be found. Instead they “will undergo ‘rehabilitation and integration’” with other herds, according to
Fox News.
So far Chinese zoos have paid for eight elephants, and Johnny Rodrigues, chairman of the
Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force,
says that when attention to this scandal dies down, Zimbabwe will send
the outstanding animals. “The rest of the order will be shipped,” as
The
Global Post put it.
The Chinese and some activists have said that the elephants sent to
China were not kidnapped from their families but orphaned in a local
drought,
The Scotsman
reports. Other activists say the animals were not orphans. The Scotsman
also claims that the national reserve from which the elephants were
taken is carrying “twice its capacity” of elephants “with devastating
effects on the terrain.” This is questionable since, as
National Geographic reports, “some African elephant populations” are endangered.”
The elephants already sent to China, who are estimated to be
3-4 years old, face
a bleak fate. Barren concrete cells enclosed by metal bars are cold
comfort to young animals who have just been ripped away from their
families and homes.
Stealing these elephants from their mothers and families and shipping
them off to zoos isn’t ethical, says Dave Neale, director of animal
welfare for the
Animals Asia Foundation. ”
Removing
a highly intelligent, social animal from its family group and wild
habitat to be shipped to another country and placed inside a concrete
cell cannot be justified.” He called the practice “morally repugnant.”
Chairman of the Zimbabwe National SPCA Ed Lanca agreed: this “is basically kidnapping.”
Even Dr. Ian Player, a man who himself has been involved in sending
rhinoceroses to zoos, condemned this project. “The sale of animals to
destinations where it is known the animals will not be properly cared
for, and facilities that are inadequate, is absolutely and morally
wrong,” he said, according to
Africa Geographic Blog.
This trade with China may be illegal.
All Africa
states that the “international body responsible for issuing trade
permits for endangered species,” CITES, “went against its own
regulations” in approving this transaction. Those regulations “prohibit
licensing the sale of endangered species for commercial purposes.”
CITES regulations also prohibit “risk of injury, damage to health and cruel treatment” to endangered animals.
All Africa
argues that the Chinese are violating this regulation because the
imported elephants are “being kept alone in unfamiliar surroundings” and
the “temperature in their new home is much colder than the African
climate they were born in.” There is some speculation that it was the
cold, perhaps combined with the arduous journey to China, that killed
the one elephant calf.
Dave Neale, however, says that though he strongly opposed the sale,
it was legal and not in violation of CITES regulations.
Rodrigues has
harsh words
for CITES that would explain how the body could have issued permits for
the kidnapping and sale of these young elephants into such wretched
conditions: “there is a lot of greed and somebody is either being paid
off or it’s just things that don’t make sense to me and it’s
disgusting.”
The Scotsman reports “fears the elephants may be bred for ivory.”
Please sign our
petition to CITES asking that governing body to revoke the permits that permit this travesty to continue.
