North American African Elephant Population 2023

Status
Not open for further replies.
Zoofan15 said:
Interesting article on Fort Worth’s breeding programme:

https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/fort-worth/article273189065.html

The number of elephants in zoos has also declined. Fouraker said many zoos shied away from keeping males because they are more destructive and harder to maintain than females. Now zoo elephant populations are aging out with no offspring to replace them.

“That’s big picture zoos as a whole,” Fouraker said. “We have ... elephants that are coming up in age and we will have elephants well into the future because we have young females coming up. But not all zoos were doing that.”

Full article in link.
Click to expand...

Fort Worth Zoo has Asian Elephants and not African Elephants, so this should go in the North America Asian Elephant population thread.
 
Sedgwick County Zoo

So apparently a month ago on February 14th, the Sedgwick County Zoo posted an update on their African Elephant herd and the zoo clearly states that they do NOT have any pregnancies in their herd yet.
 
John Marchwick said:

Omma, a 12 year old African Elephant at the Omaha Zoo, is pregnant with her first calf and is due in late February or early March 2024. This is Omahas 5th calf and the sire is the zoos bull Callee.

Lollys calf also has been named Mopani.
Click to expand...
Wonderful news to see Omaha's fifth and final cow pregnant (as was of course expected:D). Hopefully she'll also benefit from Jayei giving birth later this year too and can spend a few months gaining further maternal knowledge for her own birth next year.

Also good to see Ohama finally using African names to name their calves too. Mopani's a very nice name.:)
 
John Marchwick said:
Sedgwick County Zoo

So apparently a month ago on February 14th, the Sedgwick County Zoo posted an update on their African Elephant herd and the zoo clearly states that they do NOT have any pregnancies in their herd yet.
Click to expand...
Disappointing to hear, but I was interested to see Sedgewick willing to AI females at other facilities using their own bull prior to doing the same with their females who still haven't conceived seven years on.
 
Very sad news, but not surprising. Given all the recent posts they’ve been making on social media about her, it’s definitely felt like they’ve been slowly ramping up and preparing their zoo community for her inevitable passing.
 
This is really exciting and unexpected news! It will be very interesting to see where the girls end up. Hopefully, they end up with a viable breeding bull and some other cows so that they will finally be able to breed naturally and be part of an actual herd.
 
Very interesting news, but not entirely upsetting by any means! Christie is extremely genetically valuable, and while its been a while, there's a reasonable chance she should still be viable as a breeder. And Zuri of course, is at a prime age to get pregnant with her first calf. Hopefully they get a move on sooner than later!

I'm quite curious where they might be headed. Call it a gut feeling, but I think it might be North Carolina (unfortunately).

I think it's safe to say Sedgewick, Omaha, Dallas, Tampa, Tucson and San Diego are all non-options. They all have fertile multi-cow herds already. Pittsburgh's ICC is a no-go, Zuri is Jacksons daughter. I highly doubt Fresno, both their cows are likely pregnant by now, and putting two unrelated mother/daughter units together is just asking for them to butt heads.

Technically Atlanta and Maryland both have newer exhibits with bulls and the space for more animals, but both Tuffy and M'sholo are nonbreeders, and Samson is young and unproven as of yet (albeit genetically valuable). It's a very left field move, but I wouldn't be 100% surprised to see them come up to Canada, either. Hogle and Parc Safari have worked together on AI attempts in the recent-ish past, and Junnot is extremely genetically valuable, as an unrepresented founder. Granby of course has Tutume, who is entering his prime at 20 years old, and is also an unrepresented founder for the North American region. Both bulls are large enough to dominate and breed Christie, and both are familiar with dealing with older cows as well.

Edit: Technically Oakland is an option, and Osh *is* a founder for the region as well, but I've heard they're considering getting out of elephants once their remaining cow passes away. Plus Osh is older, unproven, and AFAIK hasn't actually physically shared space with the cows for a very long time, so they would be a very risky option to take, especially considering Christie and Zuri have no experience with bulls either.
 
Hyak_II said:
It's a very left field move, but I wouldn't be 100% surprised to see them come up to Canada, either. Hogle and Parc Safari have worked together on AI attempts in the recent-ish past, and Junnot is extremely genetically valuable, as an unrepresented founder. Granby of course has Tutume, who is entering his prime at 20 years old, and is also an unrepresented founder for the North American region. Both bulls are large enough to dominate and breed Christie, and both are familiar with dealing with older cows as well.
Click to expand...

Granby is likely a no go. They have pledge to phase out and rehome the elephants once their older female passes.

I also think Parc Safari is low likelihood given the Jane Goodall Act going through government right now which would ban future elephant imports and breeding, among other things. I doubt they would take the steps to bring elephants up to Canada when the government will make it impossible to breed them. Parc Safari hasn't said what its future plans are for their elephants.
 
TZFan said:
Granby is likely a no go. They have pledge to phase out and rehome the elephants once their older female passes.

I also think Parc Safari is low likelihood given the Jane Goodall Act going through government right now which would ban future elephant imports and breeding, among other things. I doubt they would take the steps to bring elephants up to Canada when the government will make it impossible to breed them. Parc Safari hasn't said what its future plans are for their elephants.
Click to expand...
Euch, I thought that stupid bill was dead in the water, I wasn’t aware it was still going through :(

and that’s fair on Grandby as well. It heard conflicting info going back-and-forth about if their elephant program was continuing or not, but honestly haven’t been keeping super close tabs on it. I try to say somewhat aloof to things going on in Canada, since it’s usually just sad things that make me sad if I pay too much attention, lol.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top