The Elephant Sanctuary Tennessee » Elephant Sanctuary

The Elephant Sanctuary Tennessee
02-04-2008

Two recent deaths at TES:

March 11, Asian elephant Delphi died after suffering for some weeks. She died amongst friends like Misty and Dulary, and of course the caregivers who did everything they could to make Delphi as comfortable as possible. Delphi was 62 years old.

March 29, Asian elephant Queenie suddenly died. She was a healthy elephant, and her death was totally unexpected. Queenie was 49 years old.

More: The Elephant Sanctuary : Hohenwald, Tennessee

02-04-2008

omg queenie- tahts a huge shock

03-04-2008

This sanctuary is very similar to PAWS in California. Many ex-circus and zoo elephants have been placed in these establishments, and of course have access to much more space then they would have had in their former homes.

07-05-2009

Bunny's health is deteorating very quickly.

Elephant Sanctuary: "Bunny slowly passing away" : Local News : Evansville Courier Press

07-05-2009

It is sad to hear about these deaths.

Fortunately, though, when an elephant death occurs there, everyone seems to realize that elephants do die, even when they are receiving wonderful, loving care. The same applies when a zoo elephant dies, but animal-rights activists don't understand that.

09-05-2009

If you care to take a deeper look into their website 4 main issues come to mind:
* Elephants, well at least the Asian Elephas maximus, are endangered with a total population of only ca. 45,000 individuals across Southern and SE-Asia. Yet Hohenwald makes no effort to increase their numbers, neither in the wild nor in captivity (it even frowns upon zoos investing in captive-breeding or increasing their elephant habitats).
* Its main goal is to accomodate elderly elephants on animal welfare grounds (their policies in that respect are sometimes rather dubious and the method of pressurising individual zoos to send off their eles to them through the media I find particularly distateful), yet their management system does not replicate any natural elephant behaviour patterns nor their social structure (this happens when you put non-familiar elderly and sometimes socially mal-adapted eles into groups of non related elephants. I can not see the welfare aspect in that! It is just all about space, if that in itself would be significance (as even these sanctuaries cannot hope to provide the space sufficient to pretend they live in the wild, no they remain captive. So, if you are going to name it, then tell it like it is ... yes, CAPTIVE!).
* The Hohenwald Sanctuary and most other ele welfare institutions are off-show facilities and I cannot see what benefit the few ele adopters will have on the perceptions of the wider general public on elephant conservation. Besides, adoption is well overpriced and gives you the right to visit for a mere couple of 1,000's of dollars.
* The Hohenwald Sanctuary and most sanctuaries like her make no substantial financial or other contributions towards elephant conservation in situ. Zoos on the other hand, particularly in European and US zoos, do so substantially and also invest in methods and policies to improve in situ conservation and research important aspects of elephant biology and conflict resolution (if you exclude people from nature conservation you will end up with dead elephants only) and alternative income generation from generally poor populations in Third World nations living in close proximity of wild elephants (and they are not CUDDLY, I can tell you)!!!

Well on these grounds I find these places not worth looking into much. Besides the resident attitude to anthropomorphise the elephants in their care and provide them with names as if they were discardable cuddly toys "thingies", I find so demeaning for elephants as taxa representative of fascinating wild animals that they are!!!

K.B.

09-05-2009

I also find "demeaning" their habit of calling keepers "caregivers" - as if keepers aren't good enough.

Let's face it, at the end of the day some of these places are fund-raisers with elephants as the product.

17-05-2009

Bunny's died And apparently, Ned has too, according to Bunny's page on Ele Encyc, but I can't find any other mention on either the Hohenwald site or his page though

17-05-2009

The Elephant Sanctuary is not one of them. It is a wonderful facility and the employees are devoted to the elephants. They received a four-star rating from Charity Navigator.

17-05-2009

Here's the release about Ned:
The Elephant Sanctuary : Hohenwald Tennessee

17-05-2009

Does not mean zilch from an animal welfare or zoo management point of view. Only AZA is eligible and able to make that kind of judgment, not some charity ISO trademark ...

And for what it is worth, no absolution over my 5-pointer issues (LOL)!

17-05-2009

They must have released that article after I checked the website. Not good, loosing two elephants in twelve hours

17-05-2009

And here is the one on Bunny:

The Elephant Sanctuary : Hohenwald Tennessee