Zimbabwe export African elephants to the UAE : Zimbabwe's government admits capturing baby elephants to send to UAE - Telegraph
While extremely concerning, this is hardly surprising given Zimbabwe's government. I don't know how Zimbabwe's elephant population is faring though. I know South Africa's is too big, so exporting some animals to zoos is probably better than culling them (assuming conditions in the zoos are good).
Thanks to all the argumentative media savy PETA affiliated groups and the media reporting elephant importations from wild state - despite the precarious state of affairs in both Asiatics and Africans - more or less makes any import to Western world zoos a non-starter. Sadly, I can think of a million reasons why we should import some elephants for the benefit of in situ conservation areas in the wild exactly to safeguard them from short term poaching risks and other human-induced threats. Aside, zoos remain one of the single / best communicators' of the conservation message to conserve elephants in the wild. Whether elephants in Zimbabwe can be termed at extreme risk is very difficult to assess at the moment.
I read this in the Telegraph myself, and hope that the UAE is the destination for the elephants and not a staging post to a circus show in a Chinese zoo. I don't mind good zoo's keeping elephants in naturalistic exhibits, but not to dress them up and perform tricks.
Given the amount of stimulation a elephant in a circus would receive I wonder if they could choose what would be the preferred option. BTW I watched the Bull Elephant at Taronga zoo last month perform tricks including kicking a ball into the crowd...
I see where you are coming from zooman and I agree with the stimulation part. I loved animal circus acts as a child,-the bits in between clowns, acrobats dancers etc where the boring parts for me.- and a circus with out animals is, in my opinion just a variety show. But but it is the possible cruelty involved with the training I worry about, (See the Mary Chipperfield thread) do elephants do handstands in the wild? natural behavior is fine,including trunk to tail and lying down etc, and kicking balls too but with out the headress's and showgirls on their backs please. I think it is the human dominance as entertainment that is my real problem.
I think that is a slightly different scenario to a circus elephant. A circus elephant is often forced to perform tricks while protected contact elephants (as with the bull at Taronga) do it for reward. In both circumstances in may be stimulating for the animal but I don't think you can compare circus displays with those equally found in protected contact zoo elephants (free contact on the other hand is a different story).
