Elephant SSP

It's great that the Oregon Zoo now has its 28th baby elephant, and they have a formidable breeding record. However, even the zoo director has slammed the crappy elephant exhibit, and so hopefully the 7 or 8 elephants there will get a new enclosure in the next few year. It will be voted on in November...
 
More Elephant Moves

Asian Elephants, Tess and her calf Tucker, arrived on breeding loan in Houston, TX from Have Trunk Will Travel in Perris, CA.

Meet the Houston Zoos New Elephants! - Houston Zoo

The zoo's new page for these additions also add that there are 13 female Asian elephants available to expand the SSP breeding population...I wonder where they are and where will they go. Obviously Los Angeles will receive some...the others Miami? Columbus? Cincinnati?
 
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I just posted an obiturary for everyone to read.This will be very hard for the Torontonians
 
PAWS elephant dies

Performing Animal Welfare Society is not part of the SSP, but they do operate an elephant sanctuary in Southern California. They lost one of their African Elephants recently who had been with them since before the sanctuary was created.

News - PAWS reports death of 26-year-old elephant - sacbee.com

#71 was one of the 100+ Nautilus elephant calfs that were imported from Africa to Florida in the 1980s after their herds were culled.
 
okapikpr,

Thanx for making the SSP African elephant studbook available to us.

What struck me regarding the current situation in SSP African elephants is the percentage of single sex herds is still quite large and AI is considered a stop-gap instrument to get breeding started prior to re-assembling all African elephants in breeding herds (the preferred policy which will take time as this requires remodelling or building new exhibits).

I have flicked through the entire thread and could not find an answer.
What I would like to know right now is whether - since for all elephants the subspecies or lack of information thereof is listed - the subspecies issue has any relevance to the breeding programme?

Does the species coordinator eventually wish for separate breeding programmes for both the knochenhaueri and africana subspecies (to preserve genetic purity of both geographically separated subspecies) at all?

Another question that bears on my mind ...: What is the current SSP policy towards building new exhibits: larger more conducive exhibits for current groupings or building exhibits that accomodate both separate bull and cow-calf enclosures +/- further exhibit for the main herd?

Jelle
 
Subspecies will not be a factor in breeding reccommendations. While there are a lot of elephants, including many that are of breeding age, the current captive bred elephants have a small gene pool due to a lack of breeding bulls. Right now the captive programs are working towards breeding and more calves.

As for new exhibits, there are a variety of factors that the SSP requries as the standards (minimum). Basically there are now minimum space requirements and every zoo must be willing to house at least one bull elephant when making designs for new or renovative construction. Here is a link to the SSP Standard Guidelines for elephant care. This will probably answer anymore questions you may have:

http://www.elephanttag.org/Professional/AZA Standards.pdf
 
It is interesting that the guidelines state that all zoos "should consider designing exhibits" giving elephants 24 hour access to their outdoor exhibits. I'd be intrigued to see a list of zoos that give their elephants nonstop access to their outdoor habitats year-round, as it would be a disgracefully short list. Also, I was intrigued to read about how the size of an elephant's indoor space is determined partially by the climate that the zoo is located in...and in my mind that further elevates the zoos that are found in warm weather areas.
 
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