Plan for elephant move from zoo

Royce Millar and Selma Milovanovic

MELBOURNE Zoo’s big ticket attraction, its five Asian elephants, would soon move to the Werribee Open Range Zoo under a new vision in animal care by zoo chief John Wills.

In an exclusive briefing with The Age the Zoos Victoria chief executive said a “consensus” among the zoo’s staff and board
was that the “ideal” option was that the elephants should move to the spacious paddocks of Werribee’s African animal
precinct.

“There is a discussion taking place — the concept that we need to look at moving them down to a more open plains; within the next five or six years’ time would be ideal,” he said.

The relocation proposal, and a new direction for Zoos Victoria, comes just two years after the controversial importing of eight Thai elephants — five for Sydney and three for Melbourne — and five years after the opening of the $15 million Thaithemed
Trail of the Elephants enclosure at Parkville.

Melbourne Zoo claimed then that it was motivated by conservation while international protesters branded the importation
a commercial decision.

Melbourne Zoo spent $2.5 million to bring its three elephants from Thailand. It has since spent an estimated $300,000 each year on their feeding and care.

Early this year The Age revealed concern among staff and animal experts about mistreatment of animals at Parkville, including the stabbing of one elephant, Dokkoon, with a long thin tool known as a marlin spike.

The stories led the Government to establish an animal care watchdog body, theWelfare Peer Review Committee, which included the RSPCA. It was the animal welfarebody’s first official role with the zoo.

Mr Wills said the elephant move had been canvassed with zoo staff and the board as part of work towards a new five-year strategy that would more clearly define the roles of the three zoo campuses at Parkville, Werribee and Healesville.

The strategy will be finalised in mid-2009.

Zoo critics have welcomed Mr Wills’ animal-friendly philosophy since he took up the post eight months ago. However, he is soon to leave for family health reasons.

Former Werribee zoo director and zoo reformer David Hancocks last night applauded the elephant relocation plan, but said he feared the power of the turnstile might yet win out over loftier concerns for animal welfare.

“My fear is that without John Wills present the chances of the elephants being relocated are greatly reduced,” he said. “He is such a rare visionary.”

Mr Wills said the pulling power of the elephants at Parkville was sometimes overstated, stressing that most visitors were drawn by a range of experiences. He he did not believe the absence of elephants would deter visitors.

In January, then Melbourne Zoo acting chief executive Matt Vincent told The Age that more people would see the elephants at Melbourne Zoo than at Werribee and that the breeding program would contribute to education.

Mr Wills said it was now clear that the State Government also wanted to move from the traditional zoo model. He said the zoo would be mainly concerned with conservation.

“The past zoo model I don’t understand,” he said. Mr Wills said a rethinking of future spending at the zoo meant that much-needed but overlooked improvements, such as upgrading the baboon enclosure, were now top priority.

No elephant has been born in Australia — but two elephants are pregnant at Taronga Zoo in Sydney and one, Dokkoon, at Melbourne Zoo, is due next December or in January 2010.

A baby elephant was expected to generate millions of dollars in visitor revenue.

The Thai elephants at Melbourne joined long-term residents Bong Su and Mek Kapah. Bong Su is regarded as one of the
world’s most fertile Asian elephants because of his high sperm count. This month, the zoo announced that his frozen sperm would become available to overseas zoos in a breakthrough project to boost the global gene pool.

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