By Don Pinnock – Daily Maverick
The campaign to free Pretoria Zoo’s elephant has been sustained for years, often with angry words, accusations and protests. Finally it’s official: Charlie is on his way into wild retirement.
Zoos are not good places for elephants, and for Charlie it was worse. In his sandy, desert-like enclosure at the Pretoria Zoo, he witnessed the death of his female companions and his young son, Deneo.
Alone after 21 years in the zoo, he has the form of an elephant, but without the touch and communication of a herd, he’s hardly an elephant at all.
He was captured in Hwange, Zimbabwe, 43 years ago and was trained in the Boswell Wilkie Circus. When it closed down he was transferred to the Natal Lion Park, and then, in 2001, to the Pretoria Zoo.
In about 2020 activists began campaigning for his release to a sanctuary. According to Smaragda Louw, the director of Ban Animal Trading, keeping Charlie in solitary confinement in a barren enclosure with almost no shade and dirty water and with no enrichment is “nothing more than animal abuse for the sake of human entertainment”.
Elephants are highly social animals. When his partner, Landa, was alive he had company. Alone, he leans against a rock, listless, bored and unstimulated. There is no space for him to exercise and no enrichment equipment. He suffers from cholic, unknown in free elephants.
Protests
There were protests, petitions, and people with placards demanding FREE CHARLIE lined roads outside the zoo. A petition for his release got more than 42,000 signatures.
In an open letter to then Environment Minister Barbara Creecy in 2021, eminent elephant specialists, including vets, lawyers, conservationists, traditional leaders, animal welfare specialists, scientists and heads of environmental organisations in South Africa, Pakistan, India, the US, Botswana, Kenya, Canada and Zimbabwe appealed for his release into the care and community of a sanctuary. The EMS (Elizabeth Margaret Steyn) Foundation offered to fund his move to a sanctuary and his upkeep – and now has.
The Zoo prevaricated, temporised, and said it would procure another elephant as a companion. Petitioners found the last suggestion unacceptable. Elephants are simply not zoo animals.
“There is absolutely nothing educational about this ‘display’ of an African elephant,” said Louw. “How this is supposed to contribute to the conservation of African elephants is a mystery.”
In the end, the zoo conceded and, about a year ago, agreed to begin plans for the elephant’s relocation. Despite prior protests and acrimony, the process was amicable.
Shambala Private Game Reserve agreed to provide Charlie with a new home and – in a ground-breaking joint decision by then Environment Minister Barbara Creecy, the board of the South African National Biodiversity Institute and the director of the Zoological Gardens – the green light was given for him to retire.
Intricate plans are under way and his relocation has begun. It will be a complex operation and will be minutely monitored by specialists and conservation organisations.
Shambala has outlined a comprehensive relocation plan, which includes the capture, transport and integration of Charlie into their facility. He will initially be kept at a holding facility while he adjusts to his new environment, and will hopefully eventually be integrated into Shambala’s resident herd. The reserve will provide regular health reports to the South African National Biodiversity Institute for at least a year following his arrival, ensuring his continued care and oversight.
New living conditions
Charlie, who has no experience of foraging in the wild, will initially be kept by himself while he adjusts to his new living conditions.
“Management, staff and visitors to the National Zoo will miss Charlie,” said Nontsikelelo Mpulo, Director of Marketing, Communication and Commercialisation at the South African National Biodiversity Institute. “He is a charismatic and charming member of the larger zoo community nationally and internationally. We all knew that the time would come when this majestic animal would have to retire. We extend our heartfelt wishes for his well-being and happiness in his new home.”
Charlie the elephant at Pretoria Zoo. (Photo: Ban Animal Trading)
There are lessons to be learned from the Charlie saga. Around the world, keeping elephants in zoos is being challenged. It is increasingly acknowledged that it’s unacceptable and cruel to remove animals from their natural habitats and break up social units for the amusement of zoo visitors or in the name of research.
In zoos, elephants die much earlier than wild ones and are deprived of their most basic needs, resulting in a high mortality rate. It’s recognised that they cannot survive in near or complete isolation. They can become obese, diseased and stressed.
‘History of extreme exploitation’
According to the Pro-Elephant Network, “the history of elephants in zoos in South Africa is one of extreme exploitation, violence and death, which saw baby elephants, mainly between the ages of two and seven, violently removed from their mothers and families, who were often killed in front of them during culling.
“Charlie has witnessed the deaths of a number of elephants in his enclosure,” notes a Pro-Elephant Network report. “A growing body of scientific evidence supports the idea that non-human animals are aware of death, can experience grief and will sometimes mourn for their dead.”
Charlie the elephant. (Photo: Ban Animal Trading)
There are about 1,500 formal and many more informal zoos in the world holding three to four million wild animals. Some creatures do well in good zoos, but elephants are not among them. For every calf born in a zoo, according to a report in Scientific American, on average another two die. This is almost three times the mortality rate in the wild.
The decades-long effort by zoos to preserve and protect elephants appears to be failing, exacerbated by substandard conditions and the denial of mounting scientific evidence that most elephants do not thrive in captivity. The overall infant-mortality rate for elephants in zoos is a staggering 40% – nearly triple the rate in the Asian or African wild.
In US zoos, 76 elephants have died since 2000, half of them before age 40. Nearly 50% of that country’s captive elephants display atypical behaviour such as swaying, rocking and placing vegetation or food on their heads.
If an institution’s yardstick is to do no harm to these animals – and it should be – elephants are increasingly being seen as beyond the capability of almost all zoos.
They are highly social, live in close family groups and move large distances in search of a great range of foods that cannot be replicated when in captivity. This is increasingly being acknowledged by zoo management.
Since 2000, 37 zoos in Europe have closed their elephant exhibits, including London’s Regent’s Park where they had been displayed for 170 years.
For Charlie, the isolation will soon be over.
