Howletts Wild Animal Park Howletts Elephant herd rewilding

What are everyone’s thoughts on Damian Aspinall’s plan to release the Elphants into the wild? I think that this is an idiotic proposal, given the ill fated outcome of Djala’s Gorilla Family who were realsed in 2013. I don’t think Aspinall will ever learn that releasing animals used to a sheltered captive life is a bad move. The conciliation is that Janu a young Bull who was transferred to Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm will be spared of the release. at least theoretically Janu should be safe. fortunately I have heard confirmation that Coco Howeletts breeding Bull will not be released. This leaves me wondering will Howeletts obtain a new herd or will Coco be moved to head another herd? Regarding Janu can someone confirm if he has been spared of being sent back to the wild,due to residing at Noah’s Ark. I’m asking as I don’t know where Aspinall stands regarding custody of Janu?c

 

Problem is there is a huge difference between the theory and practicality of sending any animal let alone elephants back to the wild. Its a nice thought but personally I would like to see the herd keep breeding in Britain

 

@Embu like you I would also like the Elephant herd to be kept in Britain.

 

All thoughts about the project itself aside, (and you might want to be careful about maintaining a degree of professionalism in your statements on a public forum The Hedgehog, as you never know who's reading...) a major gripe I have with this project is the repeated phrasing of this as 'rewilding'.
From its origins in the States as a term used for the restoration of wild places and their ecosystems through systems of 'cores, corridors and carnivores', the term has become an increasingly broadly-used (and in my opinion misused) catch-all for anything vaguely relating to reintroductions or conservation.
This is not ecosystem-focused, or even population-focused, it is a release of a small number of captive-bred individuals, at a location where the species is already present, and will likely have no long-term impacts on ecosystem function. How is this rewilding?

 

I think that it is a nice concept but releasing animals to the wild who have mostly lived in captivity is a complicated subject and really if this does go ahead they should probably be phased in to release or something similar. As I said I think that on paper this could be a good idea but I don't think this is the right situation at the moment and with this particular group of individuals. I know I am not as wise as others on zoochat to speak about this sort of thing, disagree with me all you like, this is just the impression that I get.

 

As a matter of economics there are around 36,000 elephants in Kenya and anti poaching measures etc are expensive and complex. But they seem to be having a very positive effect.

For the cost of exporting 13 elephants to Kenya, holding them for 6 months in an enclosure to adjust them to the conditions and then integrate them it’s likely far more elephants could be protected.

Additionally these 13 won’t have a substantial impact on population, welfare or genetic diversity.

It seems therefore that this is little more than a vanity project stoked up by the idea no animal should be captive even though there is clearly a link between people ‘seeing’ wild animals and the support of conservation.

Plus it stops Howlett having to shell out to care for the elephants for the rest of their lives.

I get an intention to stop breeding them if aspinall doesn’t want them in captivity and so letting them die out. It’s currently the choice of parks and zoos to decide whether to hold elephants or not.

But they have 13 as they actively pursued breeding them in the UK far from their ‘natural home’ in the first place.

Had they not bred them there wouldn’t be so many. So the issue has been caused by wanting baby elephants to bring in visitors and now there’s a switch of sentiment to so called rewilding. Well they should have thought about the long term before breeding animals that live so long.

I haven’t voted in the poll however as it doesn’t matter what I think should be ‘allowed’ - these elephants are property and treated as such (as we can see - bred from when it suited one agenda and ‘rewilded’ when it suits another).

Who would stop it?

At the end of the day Aspinall can have them all put down if he wants to and no one could stop that either.

The Kenyan wildlife service might have something to say about this proposal of course. When the group intending this first announced it in mid 2021 to every media outlet they could reach they hadn’t even consulted the Kenyans. But of course with such a dependency on funding from the organisations supporting this ‘rewilding’, would they be able to say no thanks anyway…. so why bother.

The whole thing smacks of arrogance.

 

At best it may be a trial before further reintroductions in countries where elephants are more imperiled.
I think to many West and Central African nations.

 

Fairly one-sided poll so far ...

 

Very true but is still suggest the same economics would apply - you could set up a scheme to protect far more than 13 elephants for the cost of hauling a tiny set of them which were never bred with the intent or release half way around the world.

You don’t have to import elephants to a country to save them in that country.

The Kenyan programme has shown elephants don’t need to be exported from the U.K. to fight poaching and increase the population.

 

Do we reckon then that Damien Aspinall is doing a Katie Price just to get a publicity stunt on the go?

Is Howletts and PL part of the EEP and other similar breeding programmes? If so is it commonly allowed to return animals to the wild?

 

I find it amusing that I have received 2 emails in the past week urging me to come and see the largest elephant herd in the UK at half-term!
It seems fine with the AF to use the captive elephants as an advertising tool when it suits

 

Now there’s two names I never thought I’d ever hear uttered together in the same sentence!

 

If anything, I find that the elephant situation with Damian is quite significantly done perhaps for publicity reasons - the general public knows little about conservation in general, so when they see headlines of how Damian, affiliated with Carrie Johnson, released 13 elephants to native Africa, they would likely see it as a good move.
However, as far as conservation goes, 13 elephants [some of which are subspecies inspecific/hybrids] will do essentially nothing in the grand scheme of elephant conservation. I'm not trying to say "captive reintroduction *never* works", indeed it has worked various times, but in those times, such efforts were not carried out simply individually, by the acts of one man. Kenya has also responded negatively to Damian's insistence of moving his elephants, though this doesn't seem to hinder Damian. This, combined with the future re-wilding of hybrid ratels makes me wonder whether the meerkats of Port Lympne will eventually see Africa some day as well..
Also one thing I would like to mention. From what I heard, Saba the cheetah, one of two re-wilded, inadvertently killed himself after stabbing his neck with a dead antelope's horn. And how did Damian respond to this? Not at all. Damian has not yet responded on behalf of this, and seeing as the other cheetah is seemingly luckily still alive, perhaps it'll be that Damian leaves the spectators to think to themselves what happened to the other cheetah. Similarly, there is no guarantee that even if they get to the [still somewhat enclosed] wild, all 13 of Damian's elephants will survive. And I find it is foolish to gamble on the lives of 13 elephants when they have been living, perhaps better than many zoo-elephants, for Kent essentially all of their lives. I have been to Howletts, and I can say it is a very nicely landscaped zoo [yes, I said it how it is], but perhaps the mindset behind it is curious.
[But then again, I guess gambling was what his parks were built on..!]

 

As alluded to in earlier posts, I would assume that some (all?) of these elephants are the “property” of the Aspinall family dating back to when Aspinall Sr first brought the original group to Howletts. If so, then there’s nothing stopping the family operating outside normal/recognised BIAZA and EAZA methods and doing as they please…and to Hell with what anybody says!

Based on previous attempts, it seems the Father’s gambling successes haven’t quite transferred to his offspring!

 

That sums up the hypocrisy at work here rather well for me!

 

Correct assumption, for the whole group apart from the breeding bull Coco. I'm not sure who 'owns' him but it still seems rather unclear as to whether he's included in the(potential) transfer or not. As AF presumably owned previous bulls that were transferred elsewhere (was one of them Jums?) maybe an ownership exchange 'on paper' might be made so that Coco is included, I don't know...

 

It’s a shame for the animals at the end of the day.

If the cheetah was better off in the wild ‘at risk or indeed dead than captive why waste the money to send it there.

None of this seems kind or caring to me.

If Aspinall doesn’t want elephants in captivity then stop breeding them. Let them die and don’t get any more.

But shipping them about, changing their conditions, moving them from their home and their keepers and possibly hurting them or shortening their lives to prove a point doesn’t seem to be about welfare.

Putting them at risk really reinforces the point anti zoo people might make - and which I suspect most of us here would quite vigorously take issue with - that zoo owners couldn’t really care about animal welfare at all and really these are fancy creatures kept for ego because ‘we can’.

It’s not pretty watching such amazing creatures be used as a publicity tool.

 

If I do recall correctly, there was some time ago when I think the AF stated that as opposed to taking their elephants to Africa, they would instead convert the existing field into a 'retirement sanctuary' without breeding where the elephants remaining could live out their lives.
But no, it seems that this has hit the backburner, and Africa it is

 

What a shame! Retirement and a happy life / end in the home they’ve always known sounds much better than being used as a campaign football.

 

My honest opinion is he’s on a mission to feed his ego try sell himself as this amazing conservationists when he’s really just full of himself … he’s lost the plot … same as the 2 young lions he’s on about rewilding what conservation value do they have given there hybrid … less than 6 months id predict least 3-4 elephants will die out in Africa