But you both get what I am saying, right? As much as we realise that free contact in a zoo environment will always be unsafe, from the point of view of Twycross management and staff I imagine they just don't want to house an elephant they consider to be dangerous again. I know the irony of that statement. But Iris wasn't 'trained' in the way the current animals have been, I see the road they have gone down with the group they have now.
It is a dangerous mistake to imagine that you are safer with a group of well-trained elephants than in protected contact. But I understand if that is informing their management choices. But also, protected contact is not as safe as it sounds, especially with a bull.
I'm not sure I get the point about giraffe or rhino? Many zoos allow keepers to enter both giraffe and rhino enclosures with animals they trust. If you mean nobody would excuse a zoo for not housing a bull animal on the grounds that it can't be trained, sure, but then I have a list as long as my arm of 'why won't they just'-type frustrations with many collections and as we have no influence over zoo policy the best we can do is try and understand what might be informing such a decision.
Personally, I think Twycross is a massive net consumer of extremely rare wildlife and constantly seems able to acquire species other collections would give their eye tooth for, only to house them in very average enclosures until they gradually die out without much or any breeding success. For this reason, I think they should build on their 100% success rate with Asian elephants (I know it's only been two so far
) and the few other species they have done well with, and stop keeping animals they don't have success with. That was the attitude at places like howletts, if an animal didn't thrive or breed, they wouldn't just leave them to grow old, they'd find a new home for them and try something else.
