Elephant Polo : veterinarian and captive animal expert protests cruelty

[Guest guest]

Dear all,

Dr Mel Richardson was one of the supporters of the Central Zoo

Authority Directive on Indian zoo elephants. Here is his response on

elephant polo. Article also on his views on use of the ankus. Both can be

used on the website.

Best wishes,

 

Here is my response, use as you see fit.

 

 

 

 

I met my first elephant in 1969 at the Atlanta Zoo, I was a 19 year old zoo

keeper and she was 47+ year old Asian elephant named Alice. She arrived at

the zoo in 1940 when her owner, a private farmer in South Carolina enlisted

in the army and needed to secure a permanent home for Alice. I was being

trained as a back up elephant keeper. While Ed the regular keeper and

I trimmed

her cuticles on her right front foot, she had to stand putting all of her

front end weight on her left leg. That leg was stiff and reportedly was

broken when she was young. When we would not let her remove her right foot

from the tub, enforced by a bull hook placed behind her heel, she placed her

trunk tip in her mouth biting down on it whimpering and at the same time

tears rolled down from her eyes. The pain on her bad leg was too much. That

moment opened my eyes to the reality that elephants have the same emotions

and feelings as we do.

 

 

 

As keeper and eventually as veterinarian now for the last 28 years, I have

known and worked with more than 84 elephants in captivity. In 1982-84 I

worked for an animal dealer in Texas, who imported more than forty baby

African elephant orphans…orphaned by the culling operations in Zimbabwe. I

provided veterinary care to the babies as they were broken for their future

lives in captivity. I treated the abscesses and skin infections caused by

hook wounds and rope burns to their legs. It is called 'breaking' because

the goal is to break the elephants spirit so that as it matures it only

needs occasional reminders that man is in control.

 

 

 

If the elephants being used in Elephant Polo were 'playing' of their own

free will, there would be no issue. Obviously they are not. These

elephants have been captured young and tormented, starved, and sleep

deprived in order to break them so that the trainer can coerce them to do

his bidding. The elephants are being abused for entertainment and profit. I

urge the governments of countries that allow such flagrant disregard for

elephant welfare to crack down on organizers of these barbaric spectacles. I

call upon Western tourists to boycott countries that allow elephant

polo. Boycott

companies that provide advertising capital for such events. Boycott

Elephant Polo!

 

 

 

Dr. Mel Richardson, Veterinarian

 

 

 

A veterinarian with 40 years of experience, currently establishing Alliance

for Zoo Animal Welfare, an organization dedicated to improving the care and

welfare of captive wild animals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Mel Richardson

 

Veterinarian

 

Dr. Mel Richardson: No good reasons for elephant trainers to use bull hooks

 

- BY Dr. Mel Richardson

- Posted March 2, 2010 at 1 a.m.

 

Dr. Mel Richardson, veterinarian

 

A tool of elephant trainers has been around for centuries. It essentially is

a fireplace poker with a sharp point to push and a sharp hook to pull. And

whether you call it an ankus, a bull hook or a guide (the favored

politically correct term currently in use by zoos and circuses), it is in my

experience all too often just a cruel weapon.

 

Zoo spokesmen, like Jack Hanna, claim the hook is meant merely to tell the

elephant to come along, no different than me taking you behind the elbow and

leading you. I asked a friend and longtime elephant handler: If this were

the case, then why wouldn’t a wooden cane work? His reply was simple:

 

“Mel, if it doesn’t hurt, the elephant will not respond to it.”

 

At one point in my career, I was veterinarian for an animal dealer in Texas

with 52 elephants under my care. The majority were 2- to 5-year-old African

orphans from the elephant culls in Zimbabwe, where adults were slaughtered

to control the overpopulation in the parks. I witnessed the brutality of the

training or breaking of these babies.

 

I treated their cuts, lacerations and abscesses from the use of the bull

hook. I have seen the skin over the lower jaw of a baby elephant actually

slough off, due to the repeated “hooking” and subsequent infection set up by

the trauma of breaking. It is called breaking, in that the goal is to break

the baby’s spirit so that he or she literally succumbs to your every wish.

 

The hook is an instrument of intimidation and domination. Without this cruel

weapon and the fear it engenders, circuses cannot make the elephants perform

unnatural behaviors, such as headstands, walking on hind legs or balancing

on balls.

 

Zoo defenders of the bull hook justify its use claiming it causes no harm,

which is patently a lie. They insist the tool is needed to control the

elephants for medical exams and treatments. They continue to advocate

working elephants in a “free contact” program, using the hook to maintain

their dominance. I have worked elephants in a “protected contact” system, in

which I stand outside of the elephants’ enclosure protected by an iron wall.

Through windows I can draw blood, examine and care for their feet. Critics

claim the elephants will not cooperate in such a system. But experience has

proven protected contact works and hooks are unnecessary.

 

You cannot control a wild adult four- to five-ton elephant with a bull hook.

But if you take calves like Ringling’s Barack at less than a year and break

them with the use of hooks, the hook then becomes a reminder of the

trainer’s control over the elephant. YouTube is replete with

behind-the-scenes footage of handlers “reminding” elephants about to

perform, with a hook to the mouth or behind the ear, just for good measure.

 

Richardson, a veterinarian from Paradise, Calif., has more than 40 years of

experience, observing, treating and providing care for a wide variety of

captive wild animal species, including elephants. He is a captive wild

animal consultant establishing Alliance for Zoo Animal Welfare, an

organization dedicated to improving the care and welfare of captive wild

animals.

 

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2010/mar/02/dr-mel-richardson-no-good-reasons-for-ele\

phant/