Lots of African elephant-babies are waiting to be send to China : Unmasked: Zimbabwe and the life-threatening sale of baby elephants to China | Daily Maverick
Another article about the subject : The barbaric capture of baby elephants for zoos in China shocks the world | Environment | The Guardian
@Deer Forest, neither do I. It is rather overtly alarmist in nature and comes from the same channels that protested over earlier imports. Not all of these are quite that reliable! The one publicized report I know about involved 4 African juvenile elephants for both Urumqi's Tian Shan Zoo and Taiyuan Zoo. What - in my view rightly - angered protesters there was the very fact that at Taiyuan Zoo one of their two elephants died shortly upon arrival. A Chinese University animal welfare team with trained volunteers found that no measures where in place to combat the sub-zero temperatures at Taiyuan Zoo compared to Zimbabwe. The English language China Daily reported on the subject, however their articles tend to be a short transliteration from Chinese language and thus may not fully convey what their exact findings where nor what type of housing, management and husbandry level was in place at Taiyuan Zoo. I hate to make any qualified judgements there without any direct or photographic evidence from the Taiyuan Zoo on their elephant husbandry management in question! What I will hold up - even in court (LOL) - is that whereas I have no particular issues with importing groups of young elephants for conservation breeding purposes (rather than simply display only), I find it not in any animal welfare interest that the imported elephants are simply divided up and maintained as 2 loosely related individuals together without any heed to their biological (or should I say … ecological functional role) social herd structure.
And another article about the Elephant babies for China : Outrage as Zimbabwe to sell 62 baby elephants, and American hunter pays $350,000 to kill Namibian black rhino | Mail & Guardian Africa
More elephants ( and other wildlife ) for China ?: Zimbabwe ‘will export more elephants to China’ – environment minister - Telegraph
And again more elephants for China ?! : https://www.theguardian.com/environ...ng-to-ship-dozens-of-young-elephants-to-china
Yes, they have arrived. There are 35 baby elephants in total this time. 17 for Shanghai Wild Animal Park, 12 for Beijing Wildlife Park, 6 for Hangzhou Safari Park. Shanghai and Hangzhou have published messages that the elephants arrived, but no message from Beijing yet. I will keep an eye on the matter.
Update about some of the wild-catched elephants : Secret footage obtained of the wild elephants sold into captivity in Chinese zoos
And more African elephants for China ...... : Elephant calves exported from Zimbabwe as China bans ivory trade
Article about the illegal elephant-trade ( both African and Asian ) : – CITES Ignores Illegal Import of Wild Elephants by China | ENS
And again 35 African elephants planned to be send to China..... Activists in last-ditch attempt to block export of 35 baby elephants to China
That's not good ... China almost does not reproduce African elephants and has them just as an animal to increase the attendance of the zoo.
I agree with Funky Gibbon. Many of the animals kept in Western zoos are there to increase attendance and have no conservation value. I have read many comments from Zoochatters that zoos need to have ABC animals to pay for the XYZ animals that "most visitors don't want to see and are only there for Zoo nerds."
32 Elephants flown to China : Young elephants flown out of Zimbabwe after being 'secretly' removed from national park
