Well, folk, it looks like January is the month for elephant politics. A couple of weeks ago, someone wrote in with a question about if anything had happened in regards to Billy, the male elephant at the LA Zoo, whom activists are trying to convince the city government to seize from the zoo and transfer to a sanctuary. For a long time, there hasn’t been any movement on the topic – aside from frequent protests at the entrance of the LA Zoo – but now things are ramping up again.
On January 24th – Wednesday of this week – the The Arts, Entertainment, Parks & River Committee of the City Council will be hearing Council Member Koretz’ motion. While it’s mostly been presented to the public as a motion to move Billy to an “accredited sanctuary”, there’s actually other aspects to the motion that are equally if not more alarming. In addition to forcing the zoo to transfer Billy to PAWS (the only elephant sanctuary in the country that accepts bulls), it also asks the city to force the LA Zoo to cancel all current or future breeding plans for their elephants and to turn the exhibit into a sanctuary for abused female elephants. This whole situation is far more than concerned citizens advocating for the welfare of a single bull. This is about zoos and sanctuaries and animal rights and industry politics, for all that it focuses on a single animal as a figurehead.
What’s really distressing is that while the LA Zoo has been running a letter writing campaign to encourage constituents to rally against this motion, only a single person from the zoo’s animal care staff has made public comment to the city council about the proposal. Neither the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, nor the California Association of Zoos or Aquariums – both associations of which the LA Zoo is a member – has made any public comment on the motion. As of the time of writing this, there was also no posted public comment by the Elephant Manager’s Association. In short: almost nobody with zoo animal management experience, much less elephant management experience, nor even the “gold standard” accrediting body has contributed anything to the committee’s understanding of Billy’s current welfare at the LA Zoo. It’s not even clear if any of the committee members have visited the zoo and seen Billy and his living conditions, despite the urging of Council Member David Ryu. The committee will be hearing the motion and interpreting it based on hundreds of comments from the well-meaning public, most of which are form letters written by anti-zoo associations. That’s really not how government officials responsible for ordinances that effect animal welfare should be educated on the topic.
WADTT has covered why this whole motion is a whole barrel of politics in detail previously, but here’s a recap:
It would massively damage the LA Zoo:
- If the city of LA decides to seize Billy from the zoo (which they can legally do, as it is a municipally funded facility) the LA Zoo will lose their AZA accreditation. AZA facilities are not allowed to have their management choices for their animals overruled by governmental authorities, because a requirement for AZA accreditation is that the facility and it’s staff are seen as the experts by in determining appropriate care for all of the zoo residents.
- If the zoo loses AZA accreditation, it will be forced to pull out of multiple major Species Survival Programs (SSP) (because only AZA institutions are allowed to participate in the Green level programs) and will no longer be able to exhibit or breed Western Lowland gorillas, lions, and Andean condors to name a few; they would likely be prohibited from doing any sort of animal demos either on-site or as part of outreach programming, as LA’s new ordinance banning the use of wild animals in entertainment only exempts zoos accredited by the AZA.
- There is precedent for this occurring – animal rights advocates decided they wanted the Toronto Zoo’s elephants to go to a sanctuary instead of being transferred to another zoo, and they convinced the city to overrule the zoo CEO. The Toronto Zoo elephants went to PAWS, and the zoo lost their AZA accreditation.
They’re only advocating for one of the four elephants:
- Animal rights groups and Council Member Koretz are advocating for Billy to be removed from the zoo because the conditions he lives in are inhumane and inappropriate for any elephant – and yet are simultaneously ignoring the three elephant cows who also live at the LA Zoo and would be subject to the same living conditions.
- Two of the three females at the LA Zoo would be far better candidates to be sent to a sanctuary if the concern was truly allowing elephants to retire to a less stressful life- they both have chronic medical conditions, and are old enough that they are no longer be participants in conservation breeding programs.
- Billy is the only elephant living at the LA Zoo who is actually owned by the city of LA. The other three females are on loan from other institutions. The city of LA, therefore, can only seize Billy for a transfer – they have no authority over the movements of the other three females.
- The sanctuary Billy would have to be moved to (the only other elephant sanctuary in the country does not accept males) is run by the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS). The founder of PAWS openly advocated against AZA zoos, and the organization has previously unsuccessfully campaigned for the removal of Billy from the LA Zoo to their facility.
This motion is likely the start of the animal rights groups pushing for all zoos to become sanctuaries and stop breeding animals for conservation
- The proposal is supported by: the Voices for the Animals Foundation, Humane Society of the United States, the Performing Animal Welfare Society, Last Chance for Animals and Elephant Guardians of L.A.
- HSUS CEO Wayne Pacelle has written multiple times about how he wants to see zoos cease breeding animals entirely and become sanctuaries for abused animals. He has also stated that he wants to see elephants phased out of zoos entirely, and congratulated Detroit Zoo CEO Ron Kagan on his groundbreaking decision to send his zoo’s elephants to PAWS. (Kagan was also in favor of the Toronto City Council’s choice to seize the Toronto Zoo’s elephants and send them to PAWS).
- Prominent animal rights speakers such as Marc Bekoff have left zoo animal welfare seminars held at the Detroit Zoo in recent years espousing the need for zoos to turn into sanctuaries; Detroit Zoo CEO Ron Kagan wrote a chapter entitled “Sanctuaries: Zoos of the Future?” for an animal law textbook published in 2017.
- It is typical of HSUS advocacy to encourage the surreptitious addition of broader language than the public is aware of into pieces of legislation – while the public is simply concerned with with the fate of one elephant, this motion goes to further much longer term goals for the animal rights movement in regards to zoos.
How you can help:
Write the committee! Send them a message – not a form letter, but even just a couple sentences – expressing your support for the LA Zoo’s animal care. You can also say that you think they should have actual experts on elephant welfare who are unaffiliated with either political faction weigh in before they decide!
You can email your comments to clerk.cps@lacity.org – make sure to reference Council File #17-0453 and what you want to see happen (the motion needs to be dismissed) either in the subject line or the first sentence! You can absolutely email them if you’re not an LA resident, but if you are local it’s important information – they’ll pay more attention to your opinion.
I know sending letters is hard, but the unfortunate truth of the matter is that zoo industry politics often keep zoo staff from being able to advocate for their own jobs – no matter how much they want to – and so it’s really up to us to help support them considering how few comments have been submitted from the animal care sector.
If you live in LA, go to the committee meeting on the 24th! You can either listen or submit a “speaker card” so you can speak publicly. The hearing will be at 2:30 PM, January 24th in the City Council chambers, room 340.
And, as always, reblog this if you think the content is important.
http://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2017/17-0453_mot_04-19-2017.pdf
https://www.aza.org/assets/2332/aza-accreditation-standards.pdf
https://www.amazon.com/Wayne-Pacelle-A-Humane-Nation/dp/B0055O4ITK
https://www.humansandnature.org/shifting-toward-an-ethics-of-sanctuary
https://rumblingsfrompaws.wordpress.com/
https://www.pawsweb.org/documents/PAWS_STATEMENT_BILLY_LA.pdf
https://www.amazon.com/Increasing-Legal-Rights-Zoo-Animals-ebook/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-zoo-loses-international-accreditation-1.1290899
Billy the Elephant’s life at the LA Zoo will soon be up for (public, inexpert) debate.
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