To be fair, it wasn't her fault, it was London Zoo's. The house was a disaster waiting to happen. If (for the sake of argument) the house had been given over to Indian Rhino on the elephant side, with the rhino side split (as it is now) for Pygmy Hippo and Brazilian/Malay Tapir in about 1976, everybody would have been a lot better off.
To be fair, it wasn't her fault, it was London Zoo's. The house was a disaster waiting to happen. If (for the sake of argument) the house had been given over to Indian Rhino on the elephant side, with the rhino side split (as it is now) for Pygmy Hippo and Brazilian/Malay Tapir in about 1976, everybody would have been a lot better off.
I think the zoo would still have had to exhibit elephants then though as nearly all visitors would have expected such a major collection to have had them. I still apply the same thinking today! (But then I did grow up in an era when nearly all zoos I visited had at least one elephant - oh the memories of the specimen at Knaresborough that was housed with a camel amongst other things.)
As far as I know in a nutshell she became unmanageable. I have a press cutting of an article about her written shortly after her death. I shall have to dig it out, although it may be in the scrapbook that is currently at Sewerby Zoo.
The strange thing is other Elephants that lived in that house before and afterward, did not become so difficult to manage as she did. It was obviously an individual thing. She brought a whole lot of bad publicity for the Zoo too. At the time the press said she was going 'mad' and Zoocheck/BornFree was established because of her.
Her unfortunate death was caused during attempts to crate her for removal to Whipsnade, making the situation even worse.
The Asian Elephants that came afterward seemed to be okay, though Thi was later removed to Chester as she showed nervous and stereotypic behaviour in particular.
I remember when Pole Pole first arrived at Regents Park, she had been used in the film Born Free if my memory serves me correctly and Bill Travers and Virginia Mc Kenna knew her through this film. I think Pole Pole's plight was made worse by the fact that she ended up living alone, Toto the other African cow died, Lakishme the Asian cow was relocated to Rotterdam, followed by the younger Anna later. I visited London Zoo twice in 1981, in January Anna was still there with Pole Pole, however on a visit later in the year she had left, so Pole Pole would have lived at Regents Park alone for two years before she died, not the happiest episode in the history of London Zoo by a long chalk.
I believe they either played a role in getting her sent to ZSL, or tried to stop it, I can't remember which, though the government concerned probably actually presented her. At that time they were not particularly anti-zoo ( or any-zoo probably) that all came with their later experiences of her.
The film was "An Elephant Called Slowly" (it was on television on one of the Bank Holidays in May), pole pole meaning slowly, or slowly slowly, in Swahili. As Pertinax believes she was presented by the Kenyan government as a replacement for Dicksie (whichever spelling one prefers) I believe. After her death and Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers started kicking up a fuss I remember reading that the zoo had said it got the animal "second-hand from their wretched film" or words to that effect.
I've just googled Pole Pole to make sure I was 100% correct re the Kenyan government and I found a press article from last October marking the 30th anniversary of her death (an article about her and the Born Free Foundation ). It says the 2 year old animal had been captured to present to the zoo and was being held in Nairobi but was released to take part in the film. After the end of filming Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers had asked for Pole Pole to be reintroduced to the wild rather than going to the zoo.
