Why Was Thong Dee put at risk

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Why was Thong Dee put at risk

 

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

February 24, 2008

 

THONG DEE should never have been allowed to mate, argues Peter Stroud, former

senior curator at Melbourne Zoo and independent zoo consultant.

 

Throughout 2007, Taronga Zoo stated that Thong Dee was seven years old. This

claim was included in a news release dated November 13 about a report to the

Government on how the import conditions for the elephants had been met.

 

Last week, the zoo said she was eight. Now, after international controversy

around her pregnancy, a keeper has looked at her teeth and declared she is 11 or

12. The same keeper claims elephants can sometimes read his mind. (The Daily

Telegraph, Saturday). We are also told Thong Dee is the only animal small enough

for the bull Gung to reach and mate.

 

Does this look like science at work in the service of animal welfare and

conservation? I think those of us who are members of the Australasian Regional

Association of Zoological Parks and Aquaria are owed an explanation.

 

The pregnancy itself raises a number of questions. Thong Dee is either small for

her age or in fact underage. Taronga Zoo has rightly indicated that infant

mortality for mothers under 10 years old is about 50 per cent, even in the wild.

 

For a small elephant, the risks of stillbirth or infanticide are higher still,

particularly if she is overweight. Stillbirths are reported to have been up to

eight times more prevalent in European zoos than in more extensive systems, such

as work camps in Asia.

 

Everything about this elephant's situation is artificial: her environment, the

constant presence of a young bull eager to mate, the absence of mother and

aunts, the age at which she has fallen pregnant. It represents a corruption of

age-old traditional practices, rather than an approach scientifically attuned to

elephant biology.

 

We have to ask, why is Thong Dee being put at risk? This situation was created -

the elephants did not put themselves into it. A more measured, extensive

approach was and is available to the zoos, using pooled resources and their open

range properties in Australia.

 

Source: The Sun-Herald