This elephant paddock is in my humble opinion rather puny, especially considering that the 2 males spend the majority of their time in even smaller yards behind the main paddock. A dusty, fairly barren yard that is not even an acre in size...for 2 males and 4 females to rotate through? The Fort Worth Zoo has a very nice collection of animals, including just about every major type of mammal, but the exhibits are mainly average at best. The upcoming MOLA (Museum of Living Art) building will easily be the best thing about the zoo!
God I love Google. Using Google Earth and Google SketchUp, I can tell you with a close proximity how big this elephant exhibit actually is.
Barn ~5264 sq. ft.
Cow Yard ~4624 sq. ft.
Main Yard ~18689 sq. ft.
Bull Yard 1 (off exhibit) ~3148 sq. ft.
Bull Yard 2 (off exhibit) ~2929 sq. ft.
All told that is 23313 sq. ft. of on exhibit space and 6077 sq. ft. of off exhibit space. With the barn that is 34654 total sq. ft. of elephant space or .79 acres. Far short of the 4.5 acres that Fort Worth claims. I now completely agree that this is far too small for this many elephants.
Forgive me. It seems that I missed another off exhibit yard that I didn't know about. It is about 10119 sq. ft. bringing the total to 44773 sq. ft. or 1.02 acres.
@jbnbsn99: thanks a lot for the statistics! So all in all the entire elephant area is basically 1 acre, but that includes 3 off exhibit yards, the barn, cow yard and main yard that is in this photo. With 6 elephants on 1 acre that means Fort Worth probably has the most densely packed exhibit for elephants in North America, and no wonder I've been criticizing it since I visited in 2008. The entire complex is what I would deem to be puny, and the off-exhibit bull yards are where the males spend most of their time so they really lack a significant amount of space. Not only does Fort Worth have one of the smallest elephant exhibits of any zoo, but the space provided is fairly barren of anything in terms of enrichment.
I wouldn't say it is barren of enrichment. Every time I go there are a lot of toys around (balls, logs, beer kegs). But in essence you're right. Too crowded, especially with two bulls. Do any other zoos keep two adult bulls?
Here is the map I did of the FWZ's elephant exhibit. It's pretty rough, but give you some idea of the layout and size.
Dark Green areas are off exhibit yards. Light green are on exhibit yards. Gray is the barn. Brown areas are fenced off trees not accessible to the elephants.
