Within the space of 10 days I toured the Nashville, North Carolina and Dallas zoos, home to possibly the 3 most outstanding elephant exhibits in all of North America. I'm going to post an excerpt from my summer road trip thread, where I visited and typed up reviews of 39 zoos/aquariums in 46 days:
Elephant Exhibit – There are two Asian elephants in the African zone of the zoo, and their enclosure is an ugly joke. Under the searing Texan heat (it was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit on my visit) I made note of the fact that there are only two tiny shade structures in the enclosure. Each structure casts a shadow barely large enough for a single elephant and the size of the indoor holding area and small pool make this a contender for one of the truly worst elephant enclosures in all of America. Detroit Zoo sent its two elephants away and that zoo has broken its all-time attendance record in 4 of the past 5 years so that is proof that the zoo will not suffer financially without elephants and will in fact save a small fortune on food and care. If San Antonio was to do the right thing and send its elephants away then life would still go on for the zoo and once there was funding for a world-class elephant exhibit then those mammals could be brought back to the zoo. Send them away!
On a side note: the AZA is recommending accredited zoos maintain a "herd" of a minimum of 3 elephants, and yet the two aging pachyderms in San Antonio might be too old to move. What will happen?
