AN ELEPHANT'S PLACE

Sanctuary, not Circus

By LESLEY WISE

This January, eight Asian elephants began a long awaited journey to paradise. These grand, aging ladies and former circus performers – Lottie, Minnie, Liz, Queenie, Debbie, Ronnie, Billie and Frieda – were granted an opportunity to live out their lives at an elephant sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee. Two at a time over a period of two weeks, they made the trip by trailer from Richmond, Illinois, where they had spent the last two years chained inside a barren building with cement floors, to the thick green forests of Tennessee. They will now spend their remaining days roaming the 2700 acres of forest and meadows, soaking in the streams and ponds, napping together and sharing dust baths in an environment as close to their natural habitat as an Asian elephant will ever find in North America.

        Never again will Lottie and her companions feel the bite of the circus trainer's bullhook or spend their days in chains. Longtime friends will never be parted. Their circus days are over.

         Unfortunately, these are the lucky ones. For the hundreds of elephants still in the entertainment industry, life in the circus is a brutal grind that can last into the fifth or sixth decade of their lives. Many of the travelling circuses that perform every year in Canada and the United States and the companies that train and lease elephants to them have a long record of animal welfare violations, cruelty charges and convictions. One of the worst offenders, Hawthorn Corporation, was forced by the United States Department of Agriculture to surrender Lottie and her companions to Elephant Sanctuary after being found guilty of 19 counts of cruelty to elephants. Hawthorn leases elephants to the Tarzan Zerbini Circus which in turn provides elephant acts for the Shrine Circus. It's possible, even likely, that Lottie or other abused Hawthorn elephants have long been “entertaining” unsuspecting Winnipeg children under the Shrine Circus big top.

        Undercover videos (including one viewable at circuses.com) and eyewitness accounts show trainers breaking young elephants or beating older ones into submission with a bullhook, or ankus: a strong rod with a sharp hook on the end. The trainers forcefully jab the ankus's tip into the most sensitive areas of an elephant's body, such as the thin skin behind the ears and in and around the feet and anus. 

        Carol Buckley, founder of The Elephant Sanctuary where Lottie and her companions have found refuge, was once a popular elephant trainer and circus performer herself. “Using punishment to instill a sense of fear is standard practice in the circus industry,” she says. “All elephants used in circuses are trained in this fashion. It is not possible to train an elephant to perform circus routines solely with positive reinforcement.”

        While many circuses and elephant trainers deny that their animals are physically abused, the mental and physical suffering that is inherent in a circus elephant's life of confinement and social deprivation is obvious to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the elephant's natural social structure and habitat.

        In the wild, female elephants spend their entire lives in the same family group: mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, cousins. This extended family is held together by incredibly strong bonds and intricate, loving relationships. Joyce Poole, who has spent 26 years studying elephants in their natural habitat, describes how tenderly baby elephants are cared for by the herd: “I have never seen calves 'disciplined,'” she says. “Protected, comforted, cooed over, reassured, and rescued, yes. But punished, no.” 

        Baby elephants destined for the circus are not so lucky. They are removed from their mothers when they are about one year old to begin training. Daily beatings are not uncommon – repeated until the baby's spirit is broken and it accepts the trainer as its master. 

         The rest of their lives in the circus is spent alone or, if given the opportunity to form close friendships with other elephants, they can be sold and separated at any time to perform in other circuses or zoos. 

        It is not unusual for elephants in their natural habitat to travel up to fifty miles a day while foraging for food. This kind of daily activity is essential for the elephant's mental and physical well-being. In contrast, circus elephants spend their days either chained in one place, in training, performing or being trucked from place to place across a continent as big as North America. Loneliness, isolation, boredom and fear take their toll and manifest in such stereotypical signs of helplessness and hopelessness as continual, repetitive swaying. Last spring, AnimalWatch Manitoba witnessed one such elephant, chained by a front and back leg, swaying for hours, day after day, in a parking lot outside the Optimist Circus in Winnipeg.

        For a 10,000-pound elephant, concrete under foot is more than uncomfortable. Its body is designed for walking on soft, natural terrain that yields under its enormous weight. Having to spend most of its life on concrete or pavement results in painful, crippling leg injuries – injuries that can ultimately prove fatal. 

        The use of performing elephants in circuses may be a longstanding tradition, but everywhere people are questioning the tradition with more and more frequency and intensity as we learn what truly complex, emotional and intelligent beings elephants are. “To see an elephant, so utterly majestic in nature, being forced to sit on a little tub, is an abomination,” says Jane Goodall. The sentencing of these awesome animals to a life of slavery in the entertainment industry is being lifted in one jurisdiction after another, including more than two dozen Canadian municipalities. 

        “In ten years, people will look back at what we did with exotic animals in circuses with astonishment and revulsion,” David Suzuki has said.

        For those circus elephants not lucky enough to be starting a new life at The Elephant Sanctuary this year, that day can't come soon enough. 

Photo of elephants at Meru National Park, Kenya, copyright (c) 2003 by Jenny Carless.