gday guys this sunday (13th) 60 Minutes on Win television will be showing the 8 asian elephants jouney in a feature aperaing at 7.30 pm . and after the show at 8.30, guy cooper will be on the website for a live webchat, any1 intersted type in 60 minutes into a search engine and you will find details
After Liz Hayes gace her opening statement (elephants taken from the wild, held in captivity for our amusement, )I thought that it was going to be very biased so switched it over straight away. I take it that it wasn't completely anti?
It wasn't completely anti - zoo at all, although the two zoo CEOs did a pretty poor job of justifying what they are doing.
too right! i wasn't gonna say anything but sinceyou did first - guy cooper especially. they just didn't come across as experts on elephants (and thats what you want in these sorts of situations - to be assured the zoos are headed by experts. but instead guy cooper was laughing nervously, making silly statements and ummmming an awful lot. the zoos didn't look good. but they did struggle to answer the hard questions...
Taronga Zoo's response Hi all, I sent an email to Taronga Zoo today about the 60 minutes story, which I thought was pretty poor. Here's the reply I got from them:
zoolover, there are not two sides to the controversy. their are infact four. the uneducated against the uneducated for the educated for and the educated against you just recived an email from the taronga zoo (an educated for). unfortunately, the argument against the keeping of elephants at the zoo has been overwhelmingly taken up by the "uneducated against" - an issue that has brought about the situation of many of the more serious issues brought up by the "educated against" being overshadowed by people who really have no idea what they are talking about most of the time. in response the zoos (largely taronga, melbourne seems to have done a remarkable job of, as a bogan housemate on that dispicable show big brother would say, "flying under the radar) let the protesters set the benchmark for the level intellect of the debate and made equally rediculous and contradictory counter-arguments.this has resulted in themselves, though no doubt educated, coming accross as an "uneducated for" much of the time. do you have any idea how many different situations that these elephants have apparently come from?!!!!! now even the zoo is painting a picture of the elephants as being a bunch of lonely abused animals that needed rescuing. (might i remind them that the responsible way to "rescue" and abused animal - is to make sure you don't pay for it). forgive me if i'm suffering from dimentia at the ripe old age of 27 - but i'm sure the zoos originally stated that these elephants were from a "tourist camp" ("working camp" paints a different picture doesn't it) and that they where definately bred in captivity and definately had not undergone the torturous process of "breaking in" that is common in "domesticating" any asian elephant be them wild born or not. if they where a bunch of street beggers from various sources, how exactly would they know? and i thought the whole purpose of the import was to bring in animals that had previous herd and breeding experience, it being a instrumental in teaching the existing elephants how to "behave like elephants".... oh well. if there is one thing zoolover, that i have learnt from this whole debacle is don't belive any of the stuff you read - just make a decision based on what you yourself are sure of. i'm pretty sure that attempting a serious "conservation breeding program" in an area not much bigger a couple of house blocks in the middle of australia's two largest cities has gotta be two of the dumbest places a person could ever expect to do anything for conservation of the worlds largest terrestrial animal. thats my educated guess anyway...
the email recieved from taronga is a load of rubbish. to say the eles lived in work camps on short chains only coming out to beg for food and lived in non family groups is an outright lie. the 3 eles that came from here dont beg for food, we have an active breeding program so that means there are related animals, are only on chains when unattended, go to the river several times a day, walk out into the surrounding countryside to graze and socialise with other eles everyday. to say they will remain in family herds is a contradition to the statement about them being involved in a breeding program across many zoos in australasia how can that happen if the are all going to stay together as a family. to say these zoos are the ONLY organisations to have the knowledge, experience and capacity to create successful breeding programs for endangered species is laughable. how many eles have been born at taronga or melbourne let alone in oz, NONE. we have breed over 25 babies in 6 years. it is a known fact that the mortality rate of ele offspring born in zoos is alot higher than any where else. eles also die alot younger in zoos. thats why recently there was a story in the press about a zoo in usa which had just lost its grand old matriach at age 40ish, thats not OLD. our old matriach is 67 to 70 years and she is still going strong and she doesnt have any foot problems either as none of our eles do. as for maintaining the genetic diversity for the entire asian elephant species come on how are 8 eles plus all the eles in oz going to do that. when the EEP has a couple of hundred eles and they dont have enough genetic diversity. the funding to protect the largest wild herd in thailand ah yeh a few million baht to put up a fence is a HUGE contribution. to say the keepers taught the eles to live FREE from chains is more lies as they still chain them to do wash downs, they were chained at night and chained them when they wanted to separate eles that would FIGHT with each other in this HAPPY social herd. as for eles being punished in their earlier lives for getting off their chain NO its the mahouts who are punished by having to pay the owner of the banana tree that his ele has just eaten while off its chain. the internatioal campaign of disinformation is coming from taronga and melb zoo with statements like the ones in this letter. because its easier to make someone the bad guy to take the heat off yourself.
