Copenhagen Zoo - Elephant herd

The elephant herd in Copenhagen Zoo getting a small snack from the keepers in their outdoor enclosure. I don\'t really like those poles as they do not give a very good view of the elephants.
January 2009

And yet... first of all, the colour chosen for the poles are supposed to resemble the colour of the clay or dirt of their homeland. I like that idea! Same idea for the colour of the walls, as you will know.

Also, I suppose, these poles are meant to be "different" than your "average" way of confining elephants to their enclosure - "different" from your "average" steel wires connected to steel poles and the likes of that.

I don´t know - I am undecided. I get totally your point though, of course....

Will have to think about this...

The poles are good for one thing: keepers safety. The keepers can quickly get in and out of the exhibit between the poles. But since the keepers are not supposed to be in with the elephants anymore I don't see why so many of them are nescessary.

Secondly, I asked one of the executives, and a good contact of mine, from Copenhagen Zoo, why the chose the poles instead of a dry moat. His reply was that they wanted to save space and a moat would take up more space than the poles.
This is not true however, since the reach of an elehant's trunk is just as long from behind poles as from across a moat. Therefore, I would have chosen moats instead of some of the poles, as they give a better outlook and view of the elephants.

I see! Well reasoned. I believe you are right.

Moats at the Miami Metrozoo allow visitors to have completely unobstructed views of the zoo's animals, and the elephant paddocks are spacious and allow zoo patrons to get quite close to the pachyderms. I'd vote for well-designed moats over massive steel poles any day of the week.

Don't worry! When I become zoo-director of Copenhagen Zoo I will remove most of those poles

@Toddy: can I be your assistant? Together we can let the bull elephants roam free all over Denmark! Haha...

Dry moats for elephants have fallen into disfavor in the zoo world because of a number of incidents where elephants fell or were pushed into the moats, with serious injuries resulting. This can be avoided by making the moat sloped gently on the animal side, but this does take more space and does keep the animals further from the visitors.

I definitely prefer viewing across a moat to peering through a cable barrier, but as elephant exhibits get larger the cost of moats is also much higher than a cable barrier.

My last post in this thead: I am with reduakari: gentle slopes into dry moats is the ideal! Actually in every possible zoo exhibit...

@snowleopard: Of course you may If only someone would donate a large bunch of money to Givskud Zoo. They have the landscape and space to create a fantastic elephant enclosure!

@reduakari: I see your point. My solution would be a very gentle slope (approx 1 meter) with boulders (approx 1,5 meters high) and possibly a very low electric fence strapped to the inside of the boulders beyond the visitors' view.

Look below for a very raw sketch of what I mean...