March 14th will mark the five-year anniversary of the death of the elephant Clara, who spent nearly her entire life in confinement at the St. Louis Zoo. To the public she was just another elephant, easily replaced by another who, to them, looked just the same. They didn’t know that she once had a loving [...]
Breaking news – NOSEY: Following many complaints by IDA over the past several years regarding Nosey, the USDA has filed a Complaint against Nosey’s exhibitor Hugo Liebel alleging numerous willful violations of the Animal Welfare Act. These include repeated noncompliance with the veterinary care, handling, housing and husbandry requirements: in all, some 25 violations over [...]
Most of the smaller circuses are now in their brief winter break, a good time for an update on some of the elephants we’ve been watching closely this circus season, with your invaluable assistance NOSEY: After several years of touring with Piccadilly Circus, Nosey’s “owner” Hugo Liebel left the circus after a reported falling out [...]
We can now report that Dumbo has been moved to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado; she is finally out of the hands of her circus “owners’” – the notorious Frisco family.
In a great win for elephants, the Toronto City Council voted to send the Toronto Zoo’s African elephants, Thika, Iringa and Toka, to the PAWS Sanctuary in Northern California. The council voted in May to close the zoo’s elephant exhibit, but decided to send the elephants to another zoo and not to a sanctuary—though a [...]
This has been an exciting week for elephants, including some momentous changes for elephants in zoos: IDA has long been fighting to stop archaic, circus-style training in zoos that is inhumane for elephants and lethal for keepers. So we are applauding an important policy change by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) that would [...]
IDA has long been fighting to end archaic, circus-style training in zoos because it’s inhumane for elephants and lethal for keepers. We are happy to tell you that the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) has announced a profound change in policy that would bring an end to cruel training practices in zoos. The AZA [...]
Seems like IDA has mostly been urging people to avoid movies this year because of the use of elephants and other wild animals who are cruelly trained and confined. But here’s an award-winning film about wild animals that we highly recommend: The Elephant In The Living Room. (Note: There are no elephants in the film [...]
On July 15, 2011, members of Friends of Woodland Park Zoo Elephants and Sound Animal Rights Alliance took their campaigns to the skies. We hired an airplane to tow the message: “ZOO ELEPHANTS SUFFER” over the Woodland Park Zoo during their largest gala fundraiser of the year. As the plane flew overhead for about an [...]
On July 10, Chico, the oldest bull elephant in captivity in North America died in the Caldwell Zoo in Tyler, Texas. Information is exceedingly sparse: Like so many other elephants in zoos, he was “found unresponsive” in the morning when keepers arrived for work. No one knows how long he had been down or what [...]