Environment ministry breaches ban on sending elephants to zoos

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India has fired off a letter to Jairam Ramesh, Minister of Environment and Forests, calling on him to reconsider a just-announced plan to send two elephants held captive in Indian zoos to a zoo in Turkmenistan as part of an animal exchange programme. In the letter, PETA points out that the Ministry’s decision is in blatant violation of the Central Zoo Authority’s (CZA) November 2009 directive requiring that all elephants presently confined to zoos be shifted to camps, tiger reserves or Forest Department facilities at national parks. The miserable living conditions of elephants in zoos as well as the danger that the animals pose to the public prompted the CZA to initiate the directive.

“It’s shocking that the government would allow and even support actions that would be illegal in India to occur elsewhere”, says PETA India’s Poorva Joshipura. “This abhorrent breach of both the spirit and the letter of the CZA directive will sentence these two elephants ? who have already suffered in zoos for years ? to a continued life of loneliness and misery.”

In arriving at the ban, the CZA cited major concerns about the living conditions of elephants who are kept in zoos, including the lack of adequate space to permit free movement and the stress caused to the animals as a result of the zoos’ routine practice of keeping elephants chained for long hours. The CZA also expressed concern over the serious threat to which visitors are exposed when elephants are kept in captivity.

Elephants are highly intelligent and social animals; in the wild, females live in close-knit family groups for life. They spend about 18 hours a day walking, feeding, bathing in water holes and interacting with other elephants. They are also known to mourn the loss of relatives ? just as humans do. In captivity, elephants are separated from their families as babies and are sentenced to a lifetime of boredom, loneliness and abuse.