Only 1 Day Left to Contact Dallas City Council for Jenny! Cross Post, Please

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Only One Working Day Left to Reach City Council for Jenny!

WE MUST STOP THE DALLAS ZOO FROM SENDING JENNY TO AN AMUSEMENT PARK IN MEXICO (see updated background info below)

 

 

1. CONTACT THE DALLAS MAYOR AND THE DALLAS CITY COUNCIL BEFORE THEY RECESS ON JULY 1 (see new talking points below). The offices of the mayor and city council may tell you to call the Zoo, but the Mayor and the City Council are the people who will make the final decision on Jenny. Please talk to them! And, keep calling until they do the right thing by Jenny.

Telephone Mayor Leppert and politely urge him to send Jenny to a sanctuary in the USA. Whether or not you live in Dallas, making a polite phone call is the most important thing you can do. Here is Mayor Leppert's contact information:

 

Mayor Tom LeppertDallas City Hall1500 Marilla Street, Room 5EN

Dallas, TX 75201-6390Main Phone: (214) 670-4054

Fax: (214) 670-0646 tom.leppert

If you live in Dallas, telephone your city council representative. Council contact info is available at:

http://dallascityhall.com/government/government.html

Whether or not you live in Dallas, email the Dallas Mayor and the City Council ALL at one time by copying and pasting the web address immediately below into your search field (if you click on it, you will email the mayor alone):

http://www.ci.dallas.tx.us/forms/mcc/MCC_Mail_Form.htm

 

2. WRITE A LETTER TO THE EDITOR TODAY!

We must bring Jenny's plight to the attention of the public by gaining access to the media. Letters to the editor is our best option, as we do not have a PR firm like the Zoo does. Please write a LTE to the Dallas Morning News advocating that Jenny go to a sanctuary rather than to an amusement park in Mexico, where she will have no protection of U.S. animal welfare and animal cruelty laws.

 

Letters should be between 50 and 200 words. Letters are selected for publication based on their clarity and brevity. They require the writer's name, city and telephone number.

 

Send your letter objecting to Jenny's transfer to Mexico to:

Letters From ReadersThe Dallas Morning NewsBox 655237Dallas , Texas 75265

Or submit your letter online at http://www.dallasnews.com/cgi-bin/lettertoed.cgi

 

TALKING POINTS:

1. There will be NO U.S. Animal Welfare or Anti-Cruelty Laws covering Jenny in Mexico.

2. The sanctuaries who will accept Jenny have thousands of acres versus 4.9 acres at the Safari Amusement Park. The 4.9 acres is likely subdivided so Jenny may actually have far less space than that. However, the Elephant Sanctuary in TN (http://www.elephants.com/) is a state of the art, 2,700 acre elephant refuge. It is the largest natural habitat refuge in the world and has a four star charity rating from Charity Navigator. The PAWS Sanctuary (http://www.pawsweb.org/) in California has hundreds of

acres and is also a state

of the art, internationally recognized facility. Both U.S. sanctuaries are excellent and Jenny should be able to retire to one of these.

 

3. After you express your opinion, ask for a copy of the performance and quality of care standards the Dallas Zoo put in place for Jenny at the Safari Amusement Park. Note: We bet there probably are no such standards. The Zoo is claiming the Safari Park is AZA accredited, which means very little. AZA is just a trade group and is not a guarantee of quality. AZA facilities have been cited for breeches of USDA standards. The Zoo hired a PR firm to spin this story to the media, but the truth is still the truth.

 

HERE IS JENNY'S STORY:

 

On Tuesday, the Dallas Morning News ran a story entitled "Dallas Zoo's lone elephant to be moved to wildlife refuge in Mexico" about the zoo's controversial decision to dump Jenny, a 31-year-old African elephant, at a safari amusement park in Mexico . Since the death of Jenny's elephant companion, Keke (39), in May, Concerned Citizens for Jenny has urged the zoo to send Jenny to The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee.

 

The Mexican park offers an unnatural, confining exhibit of only 4.9 acres -- a small fraction of the 2,700-acre Elephant Sanctuary, where Jenny would share a spacious, 300-acre natural habitat with three other African elephants.

 

It is shocking that the Dallas Zoo is moving Jenny to a distant facility in a foreign country where she will not be protected by U.S. animal welfare and anti-cruelty laws, especially when there is a nearby U.S. facility with hundreds of acres that is prepared to take her.

 

After being torn from her mother's side in Africa at the age of two, she was forced into seven years of brutal training. Jenny has been at the Dallas Zoo for 22 years, where she has had a traumatic and troubled stay. Between 1996 and 2001, the Dallas Zoo medicated her with the tranquilizer Acepromazine because of aggression and self-mutilating behaviors. Federal regulators characterized Jenny's long-term treatment with this psychotropic drug as "highly unconventional." In human health care, this is called "chemical restraint."Jenny is an abused, emotionally fragile

animal. She rocks back and forth, a sign of her extremely stressed mental

state or "zoochosis," caused by her living conditions in the Dallas Zoo, an AZA accredited facility. Jenny ekes out her existence in a small, barren prison at the Dallas Zoo, where she has nothing to occupy her time or her mind. The Zoo did not act in Jenny's best interests in the past and they are not acting in her best interests now.

She is beyond child bearing age and

emotionally unstable in a Zoo setting (including the one in Mexico). Jenny is not suitable to the Zoo's future expansion plans. They are sending her in another country where no one will be

able to track her and where she will be beyond our help. The

Dallas Zoo is responding to our emails and calls by contending that the

Mexico facility is the best choice for Jenny because it is AZA

accredited. The AZA is just a trade association. Their standards are

very minimal and

voluntary. AZA standards allow zoos to lock a two ton elephant up for life in a very

small space and that meets AZA standards. AZA accreditation is no

guarantee of quality of care. We see behind this smoke-screen.

In Mexico, Jenny will have no US animal law protection and she will be constantly viewed by tourists in cars. She deserves to retire to a world-class sanctuary where she may roam in peace with other elephants.

While African elephants in the wild are known to reproduce into their 50s and live into their 60s, in zoos they commonly die decades short of their natural time. In short, the Dallas Zoo's decision is a matter of life and death for Jenny.

 

THE ZOO MAY SHIP JENNY TO MEXICO BEFORE THEY THINK WE ORGANIZE ACTION TO STOP THEM. PLEASE ACT FOR JENNY TODAY!

IMPORTANT! If you live in Dallas and will consent to your name being listed as a member of Concerned Citizens for Jenny, please email me your name, address, phone and in which Dallas district you live. The more Dallas Citizens, who are listed as members, the more influence we have for her. Here is a district map: http://dallascityhall.com/government/council/adopted_map.html

If you want to work with me to save Jenny, please contact me ASAP by telephone.

CROSS POST WIDELY, PLEASE!

 

Thank you.

 

Margaret Morin

Chair, Concerned Citizens for Jenny

Contact: dogs_good or 972 578 0370