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Jumbo row hits elephant plans

By Andrew Darby
March 25, 2005

A legal challenge is threatening to unravel Melbourne and Sydney zoos' costly plans to import Asian elephants and start a breeding herd.

The zoos have spent tens of millions of dollars preparing for the animals, as elephants in captivity in Australia age and decline.

Both zoos, part of a wider consortium, built big enclosures and bought nine young elephants in Thailand as the lead group in a series of imports to Australia and New Zealand.

But they have yet to persuade Environment Minister Ian Campbell to allow the elephants into Australia after his department said the zoos had fallen short of legal requirements for importing endangered animals.

With the nine already overstaying pre-export quarantine, animal welfare groups warned they would appeal against any decision by Senator Campbell to allow the import.

The RSPCA, Humane Society International and the International Fund for Animal Welfare say science shows elephants suffer psychologically and physically in zoos, and are hard to breed. They say the zoos want the animals to attract more customers.

Each side is claiming strong public backing. Letters sent to the Federal Government opposing the import describe elephants in city zoos as depressing and disturbing. Sydney's Taronga Zoo has a web page of anonymous support messages.

The zoos' consortium has been working since 1998 to import Asian elephants. It scrapped a plan to bring them from Indonesia and settled on Thailand in 2002.

Taronga Zoo is completing a $40 million Asian elephant rainforest exhibit, and Melbourne Zoo a $14 million Trail of the Elephants exhibit.

The consortium, involving South Australia's Monarto Open Range Zoo, Perth Zoo, Steve Irwin's Sunshine Coast Australia Zoo and Auckland Zoo, has

prepared a management plan for about 40 of the endangered elephants that number more than 34,000 worldwide.

Speaking for the consortium yesterday, Melbourne Zoo chief executive Laura Mumaw said the breeding program would be self-sustaining, but would not return any elephants to their native habitat.

She said elephants were a charismatic, keystone animal that drew people's attention to the plight of many rainforest species.

But the project has become increasingly troubled since elephants were selected from Thai tourist camps a year ago.

The two proven breeders were lost to the group. One died of snakebite and another was rejected after it was found to be aged 40 not 20, according to Environment Department letters released under freedom of information to the welfare groups.

Exempt from the usual public scrutiny under the Environment Protection Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, the zoos refused to provide details of their application or say where the nine eventually chosen were being held.

According to non-government sources, they went into pre-export quarantine in October at a rural campus of Thailand's Mahidol University.

Scheduled to stay there for 90 days before a further three months on the Cocos Islands, the eight females and one male have been confined in Thailand for nearly six months.

RSPCA campaigner Bidda Jones said the organisation was concerned about their welfare.

"The idea is to keep them confined for the shortest time possible. All along the zoos have acted without due regard for the process," Dr Jones said.

Ms Mumaw said the consortium went ahead with pre-export quarantine before it received import approval because it felt from experience the permit would be issued by the end of last year.

"At no stage did we receive any indications that we should abandon our proposals," she said.

But the Environment Department's director of sustainable wildlife industries, Mick Trimmer, told the consortium in November that it had been unable to show its ambitious breeding goals would be approached. No Asian elephant had ever been bred in Australia, and the consortium's aim of a self-sustaining population had never been achieved by any of the world's regional zoo populations, he said in a letter.

"Overall, it falls well short of enabling us to be satisfied that the requirements of the EPBC Act relating to co-operative conservation programs will be met," he said.

Ms Mumaw said the consortium had since provided further information and it was confident the breeding program would succeed.

"On all issues we are confident that we have provided the level of detail that would satisfy the Department of Environment and Heritage," she said.

Welfare groups argue that without a viable breeding program, it would be illegal to import the endangered elephants. They cite a British RSPCA report in 2002 that found health problems in many zoo elephants. These included obesity, foot diseases, poor breeding and psychological problems, such as repetitive "swaying" seen in an old Taronga Zoo resident, Burma.

Ms Mumaw said she was confident the chosen nine would be happier in Australian zoos than in Thailand.

But complicating the task, a third participant in the initial import, Auckland Zoo, has dropped plans to take a bull from the nine.

It will now take only a cow, meaning the bull and four cows will go to Taronga Zoo and three cows to Melbourne Zoo.

Senator Campbell is due to meet welfare groups next week to discuss the issue, but he had not received advice from his department on the application, his spokeswoman said.

Humane Society International campaigns manager Nicola Beynon said if the import were permitted, the groups would appeal. "We will argue that the EPBC criteria were not met," she said. "There will not be a direct conservation benefit from perpetuating a captive population of elephants in Australian zoos."

Philip Wollen
The Winsome Constance Kindness Trust
Australia

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