(AU) Zoo in jumbo battle

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Zoo in jumbo battle

Sunday Telegraph

By Adam Bell

August 20, 2006

 

ANIMAL welfare groups will today announce plans to mount a last-ditch legal

challenge to halt the contentious importation of Thai elephants to Taronga

Zoo.

 

In a move that could add months to the animals' long journey, Animal

Liberation NSW is seeking a Supreme Court injunction to prevent Taronga Zoo

keeping five elephants in a $40 million, custom-built enclosure.

 

Animal Liberation executive director Mark Pearson said the NSW Prevention of

Cruelty to Animals Act provided strong grounds to mount such a case.

 

The latest action relates only to the importation of the five elephants

bound for Taronga Zoo - not the three bound for Melbourne Zoo. It will be

the third challenge mounted against the import of the elephants, aged from

five to 13.

 

They have spent nearly two years waiting in a Thai quarantine camp and are

now in the Cocos Islands.

 

Animal Liberation NSW is awaiting legal advice to see whether it can seek an

interlocutory injunction while the elephants are in the Cocos Islands.

 

The NSW Greens support the action and have called on the State Government to

release papers held by Taronga Zoo when Parliament resumes.

 

" Taronga Zoo wants these Thai elephants to boost its profits, not for

conservation,'' said Greens MP Lee Rhiannon, who worked at the zoo as a

keeper in 1968.

 

" Elephants are very difficult to breed in zoos, and no elephants have ever

been born in captivity in Australia.''

 

Previous attempts to prevent the arrival of the elephants, including a court

action by other animal-welfare groups, have failed.

 

Taronga Zoo spokesman Mark Williams rejected Ms Rhiannon's allegation,

saying the zoo is a not-for-profit organisation, which is embarking on the

region's first breeding program for the critically endangered species.

 

" We are already involved in five in-situ conservation projects for Asian

elephants in Thailand, Sumatra and Nepal and will bring their plight before

2.3 million visitors at Taronga and Melbourne Zoos annually.''

 

http://www.news.com.au/sundaytelegraph/story/0,22049,20185125-5006007,00.html