News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 19, 2009

Contact: Catherine Doyle 323/301-5730
Suzanne Roy, 919/697-9389

ZOO CONDITIONS CLAIM LIFE OF 2ND ELEPHANT VICTIM THIS YEAR
Scientific report warned of risk factors experienced by dead Disney elephant

San Rafael, Calif. – Zoo watchdog group In Defense of Animals (IDA) today charged that the premature death of Tumpe, a 24-year-old female African elephant at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, provides further proof that zoo practices are causing elephants to suffer and die prematurely.

“Tumpe’s brief and tragic life is emblematic of the suffering that elephants endure in zoos because of inadequate conditions and damaging practices that are killing these animals well before their time,” says IDA president Elliot Katz, DVM. “Elephants have a natural lifespan of 60-70 years, so this young elephant should have lived for decades more.”

A study published in the prestigious journal Science last December found that female elephants living in protected populations in Asia and Africa lived decades longer than those in European zoos. Stress, excessive weight, early maternal separation and inter-zoo transfers were factors in premature deaths in zoo elephants.

Tumpe exemplified these problems. In her short life, she was transferred three times and lived at four different zoos, preventing her from establishing natural social bonds. She was separated from her mother at age three, when elephant calves would not normally be weaned. In the wild, female offspring never leave their mothers, remaining with their herd for life.

Prior to Tumpe’s transfer to Disney, she was held for five years at Riverbanks Zoo in South Carolina, where, according to zoo records (available on-line at www.helpelephants.com/records):

Shortly after her arrival she was violently shoved, cornered and generally traumatized by the two resident elephants. Aggression continued into 2005 but later abated, though Tumpe remained at the bottom of the pecking order.
She was repeatedly diagnosed with monocytosis, which was “attributed to stress.”

Tumpe was repeatedly treated for bouts of gastro-intestinal distress from 2005 through 2007. One incident caused her to drop down onto her hind limbs.

Yet this fragile elephant was moved once again in 2007 to Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

“Tumpe’s death should be a wake-up call for the zoo industry to abandon its harmful practices that lead to the unnecessary suffering and premature deaths of these intelligent and sensitive animals,” Katz concluded. IDA is calling on Disney’s Animal Kingdom to release Tumpe’s necropsy and all medical reports relating to her cause of death as a matter of public interest.