Ringling's retired circus elephants to move to conservation center
The Asian elephants, which have been at the center of a long debate over performing animals, will get a 2,500-acre, state-of-the-art habitat.
THE RETIRED ELEPHANTS of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus will be moving to a spacious new home at a Florida conservation center next year, concluding a journey that began in 2015 when the circus’s parent company, Feld Entertainment, first announced it would be phasing out its use of performing elephants.
White Oak Conservation’s purchase of 35 Asian elephants from Feld Entertainment, announced today, creates what will be the largest community of Asian elephants in the Western Hemisphere, according to the organization. Construction has begun on a 2,500-acre (four-square-mile) habitat that is slated for completion in 2021.
The new refuge will let the animals choose among different landscapes—including wetlands, grasslands, and woodlands—and will be speckled with 11 waterholes, each big enough for the elephants to wade in.
“It is a chance for us to let them return to just being elephants in a situation that is as close to the wild as we can make,” says Michelle Gadd, who leads global conservation efforts for Walter Conservation. (White Oak, owned by businessman and Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter and his wife Kimbra, is part of Walter Conservation, a division of the family’s philanthropic work dedicated to conserving wildlife.)
These elephants—a species whose lifespan in captivity averages about 45 years—range in age from a few years to more than 70 years. Having lived mostly in captivity, the elephants cannot be returned to the wild. But this move is a step in the right direction, says Ed Stewart, the president and co-founder of the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS), a California-based nonprofit that takes in abandoned, abused, and retired performing animals. “It looks like it’s going to be very good captive welfare, some of the best captive welfare that you can have,” he says.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/09/ringling-bros-circus-elephants-get-new-home/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=editorial::add=Animals_20200924&rid=2D7EBD8232363870D75E126868635ACF
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Thanks for sharing the good news.
The elephants certainly deserve the better life.
