johnstoni
Well-Known Member
If anyone can add to or contradict the following timeline of asian elephants which lived at Cricket St Thomas please do. I am especially interested in any accounts the the events leading up to the bull being put down, and the eventual decision to send the remaining females to other collections:
The main elephants that visitors will remember were Chikky and Millie. Toto was the 'third' cow brought in to extend the herd in anticipation of a bull at the start of the 90s, and ready to move into the new enclosure. The enclosure pictured in the gallery was in a sunken pit. Visitors would pass along a path high above the yard and look down on the elephants. There was also a network of tunnels and grottos under the bank, one of which led up to a viewing area in the pit, at the same level. The elephants were separated from this viewing area by a moat, which was made of steps down into a concrete ha-ha. After they moved to the new enclosure, this yard held tapir and capybara for a while, before being redeveloped into a seal pool and seating for a show (was this ever built or were there just proposals?).
The timeline for events in the elephant group at CSTWP are as follows. I have a nagging suspicion there was another female for which Millie was the replacement, but I can find no records to suggest this.
March 1st 1973 - Cow Chikky arrives aged 5
May 1st 1981 - Cow Millie arrives , aged 9, after a brief stay at Woburn from Lambton Lion Park
January 25th 1990 - Cow Toto arrives from Circus Hoffoman (UK) aged 30, while the new enclosure is being built. Records suggest she came to the circus only the year before. I don't know where she spent the first 29 years of her life.
1990-1991 - New elephant house and sand paddock constructed (where current spider monkey island now sits).
March 2nd 1991 - Bull Sahib (Fridolin) arrives from Belfast aged 28. He was hand-reared in Circus Knie, and had gone to Leipzig in 1984, then Belfast in 1988. Photos at the time show keepers going in with him in the bull yard at Cricket St. Thomas.
June 7th 1992 - Two more cows, Nika and Shiva, arrive from Stockholm zoo, aged 34 and 20 respectively.
(At this point Cricket St. Thomas was holding 1.5 Asian Elephants in its new facility. There were some reports of Sahib not mixing well with the cows. Whenever I saw him he was walking round his small bull yard while the cows were in the sand paddock. Some of the cows were still walked round the grounds but I never saw this, and don't know the regularity).
April 1st 1993 - Stephen Standley, who had been manager of Cricket St. Thomas and overseen the development of the elephant herd, a new lemur complex on the valley bank below the elephants, and who had involved the park in a number of endangered species breeding programmes, leaves Cricket St. Thomas to take up a post at Blackpool zoo, where he oversaw similar developments to the elephant house there, before moving to Auckland Zoo several years later.
It was around this time (late 1992 onwards, that Noel Edmonds had become involved creating 'Blobbyland' at the park, and for a short time it may even have been known as 'Crinkley Bottom theme Park').
September 21st 1993 - Shiva dies less than a year after her arrival, aged 21, having stopped eating. She also was reported to have some foot problems that contributed to her death.
December 23rd 1994 - Sahib is euthanased with a shotgun, generating some bad press for the park. A former keeper in Leipzig makes a statement that more could have been done to find Sahib a suitable home, and that Leipzig would have taken him back if they knew he was being killed (but was not necessarily speaking as a representative of Leipzig zoo). Noel Edmonds is linked, I don't know how justifiably, to the decision by the management at the time to kill a healthy elephant, as was allegedly overseeing development of the land immediately adjacent to the elephant house into the 'blobbyland theme park'. The fur seals had already been located (or were about to be) to a purpose-built pool on the site of the original elephant enclosure on the other side of the walled garden, and a carousel occupied the site of the former (temporary) seal show, which was directly by Sahib's yard. Press reports at the time suggested the weapon was inappropriate for its use and that the animal was therefore not put down humanely/quickly enough. Sahib died aged 31. My source was newspaper reports at the time, in particular the Daily Express. I therefore can't vouch for the accuracy of those articles, only the fact that they were published in response to the incident.
November 13th, 1996 - Millie, one of the original two cows, dies aged 24, reportedly from heart failure.
This leaves 0.3.....Chikky, Toto and Nika.
February 22nd 1999 - Cricket St. Thomas gives up its remaining elephants, as all 3 cows are exported to Rio Safari in Elche, Spain.
October 19th 2009 - Toto leaves Elche for Selwo Wildlife Park also in Spain.
October 22nd 1999 - 3 Days after Toto, the other two cows Chikky and Nika leave Elche for Selwo Wildlife Park in Spain.
December 1st 1999 - Nika dies at Selwo Wildlife Park aged 41, just over a month after arriving there, and less than a year after leaving Cricket St. Thomas, having been moved between institutions twice in 8 months.
Of all the elephants to live at Cricket St. Thomas, Chikky (the original cow), and Toto (the third cow brought in to join Chikky and Millie in the new enclosure) are still alive. Chikky stayed at Selwo wildlife park where she is part of a small breeding group (1 other cow with a year old calf, and a breeding bull, making 2.2), she is now 41. Toto was moved to Valladolid Zoo in Spain in 2004, and then accompanied another cow, Rhanee, from there to Wroclaw Zoo in 2007 when Valladolid gave up its elephants. She lives with this cow and one other which was already at Wroclaw, and is the oldest of 0.3 cows aged 30+. She is 49.
It is striking that the park underwent a change in management and lost two cows, both in their early twenties, and put down a supposedly healthy bull elephant in the space of a three-year period. I'm sure that's not the whole picture. In their defence, it was still early days for the Asian elephant breeding programme in the UK, and they made some brave decisions with several rather dysfunctional animals. Sahib had been passed around several times without any success, plus Shiva arrived having attacked keepers in the past. I'm interested as to why Toto seems to be an animal that was moved countless times, whether she bullied other cows or was difficult to manage, and as I have said I'm especially interested in the events leading up to Sahib's death and the reasoning for it. But I'd be interested to see what other people on this forum remember of the Cricket St. Thomas elephants in general.
The main elephants that visitors will remember were Chikky and Millie. Toto was the 'third' cow brought in to extend the herd in anticipation of a bull at the start of the 90s, and ready to move into the new enclosure. The enclosure pictured in the gallery was in a sunken pit. Visitors would pass along a path high above the yard and look down on the elephants. There was also a network of tunnels and grottos under the bank, one of which led up to a viewing area in the pit, at the same level. The elephants were separated from this viewing area by a moat, which was made of steps down into a concrete ha-ha. After they moved to the new enclosure, this yard held tapir and capybara for a while, before being redeveloped into a seal pool and seating for a show (was this ever built or were there just proposals?).
The timeline for events in the elephant group at CSTWP are as follows. I have a nagging suspicion there was another female for which Millie was the replacement, but I can find no records to suggest this.
March 1st 1973 - Cow Chikky arrives aged 5
May 1st 1981 - Cow Millie arrives , aged 9, after a brief stay at Woburn from Lambton Lion Park
January 25th 1990 - Cow Toto arrives from Circus Hoffoman (UK) aged 30, while the new enclosure is being built. Records suggest she came to the circus only the year before. I don't know where she spent the first 29 years of her life.
1990-1991 - New elephant house and sand paddock constructed (where current spider monkey island now sits).
March 2nd 1991 - Bull Sahib (Fridolin) arrives from Belfast aged 28. He was hand-reared in Circus Knie, and had gone to Leipzig in 1984, then Belfast in 1988. Photos at the time show keepers going in with him in the bull yard at Cricket St. Thomas.
June 7th 1992 - Two more cows, Nika and Shiva, arrive from Stockholm zoo, aged 34 and 20 respectively.
(At this point Cricket St. Thomas was holding 1.5 Asian Elephants in its new facility. There were some reports of Sahib not mixing well with the cows. Whenever I saw him he was walking round his small bull yard while the cows were in the sand paddock. Some of the cows were still walked round the grounds but I never saw this, and don't know the regularity).
April 1st 1993 - Stephen Standley, who had been manager of Cricket St. Thomas and overseen the development of the elephant herd, a new lemur complex on the valley bank below the elephants, and who had involved the park in a number of endangered species breeding programmes, leaves Cricket St. Thomas to take up a post at Blackpool zoo, where he oversaw similar developments to the elephant house there, before moving to Auckland Zoo several years later.
It was around this time (late 1992 onwards, that Noel Edmonds had become involved creating 'Blobbyland' at the park, and for a short time it may even have been known as 'Crinkley Bottom theme Park').
September 21st 1993 - Shiva dies less than a year after her arrival, aged 21, having stopped eating. She also was reported to have some foot problems that contributed to her death.
December 23rd 1994 - Sahib is euthanased with a shotgun, generating some bad press for the park. A former keeper in Leipzig makes a statement that more could have been done to find Sahib a suitable home, and that Leipzig would have taken him back if they knew he was being killed (but was not necessarily speaking as a representative of Leipzig zoo). Noel Edmonds is linked, I don't know how justifiably, to the decision by the management at the time to kill a healthy elephant, as was allegedly overseeing development of the land immediately adjacent to the elephant house into the 'blobbyland theme park'. The fur seals had already been located (or were about to be) to a purpose-built pool on the site of the original elephant enclosure on the other side of the walled garden, and a carousel occupied the site of the former (temporary) seal show, which was directly by Sahib's yard. Press reports at the time suggested the weapon was inappropriate for its use and that the animal was therefore not put down humanely/quickly enough. Sahib died aged 31. My source was newspaper reports at the time, in particular the Daily Express. I therefore can't vouch for the accuracy of those articles, only the fact that they were published in response to the incident.
November 13th, 1996 - Millie, one of the original two cows, dies aged 24, reportedly from heart failure.
This leaves 0.3.....Chikky, Toto and Nika.
February 22nd 1999 - Cricket St. Thomas gives up its remaining elephants, as all 3 cows are exported to Rio Safari in Elche, Spain.
October 19th 2009 - Toto leaves Elche for Selwo Wildlife Park also in Spain.
October 22nd 1999 - 3 Days after Toto, the other two cows Chikky and Nika leave Elche for Selwo Wildlife Park in Spain.
December 1st 1999 - Nika dies at Selwo Wildlife Park aged 41, just over a month after arriving there, and less than a year after leaving Cricket St. Thomas, having been moved between institutions twice in 8 months.
Of all the elephants to live at Cricket St. Thomas, Chikky (the original cow), and Toto (the third cow brought in to join Chikky and Millie in the new enclosure) are still alive. Chikky stayed at Selwo wildlife park where she is part of a small breeding group (1 other cow with a year old calf, and a breeding bull, making 2.2), she is now 41. Toto was moved to Valladolid Zoo in Spain in 2004, and then accompanied another cow, Rhanee, from there to Wroclaw Zoo in 2007 when Valladolid gave up its elephants. She lives with this cow and one other which was already at Wroclaw, and is the oldest of 0.3 cows aged 30+. She is 49.
It is striking that the park underwent a change in management and lost two cows, both in their early twenties, and put down a supposedly healthy bull elephant in the space of a three-year period. I'm sure that's not the whole picture. In their defence, it was still early days for the Asian elephant breeding programme in the UK, and they made some brave decisions with several rather dysfunctional animals. Sahib had been passed around several times without any success, plus Shiva arrived having attacked keepers in the past. I'm interested as to why Toto seems to be an animal that was moved countless times, whether she bullied other cows or was difficult to manage, and as I have said I'm especially interested in the events leading up to Sahib's death and the reasoning for it. But I'd be interested to see what other people on this forum remember of the Cricket St. Thomas elephants in general.
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