Longleat Safari & Adventure Park The Elephants

Either way, they could have managed a really decent breeding herd at Longleat. :(
 
I don't really understand the logic behind the move.....Longleat has such a ridiculous amount of space, they could have created a ha-ha and used additional hotwire, or just moved the bull on and had a small paddock for visiting bulls when the cows were mature.....I get the sense from the programmes I have seen that (post diseased-monkey massacre/ bad chipperfiled-related press) the park management have moved in a very individualised, welfare-focused direction where new exhibits lean towards smaller species, and even the domestic animals have their enrichment and quality of enclosure taken very seriously. I kind of applaud this approach, but it does seem in line with the decisions they made around their elephants.
 
Exactly. Longleat had one of the largest elephant paddocks in the country; why throw away that example?
 
And, I'm guessing, it's not like they couldn't afford to keep them.
Longleat is one of the most visited animal attractions in the UK, and they could have easily had a great enclosure, real herd structure, and really set new standards for elephant husbandry.
 
Elephant lovers may be interested to know that today's Animal Park episode re-visited the story of the elephants, and showed one of their former keepers, Ryan, visiting them in France. The eles all seemed really happy and well - one of them even acknowledged Ryan by trumpeting and running round the house. Apparently she used to behave like that at Longleat but the French keepers had never seen her act like that before! Some of her behaviour was apparently like what elephants do to welcome one of the herd back after an absence. :D

Andy, the other main elephant keeper at Longleat was also offered the chance to go but declined as he found it hard enough leaving them behind once. :(
 
I watched it too, very touching and emotional, especially seeing as the elephants had been my favourite and most important aspect of Longleat for many years. N'Dala's recogniton of Andy was wonderful to see, and it was certainly sad to hear Andy's comments, especially where he revisited the sand bath they used and pointed out dents from their tusks.

And I'm wondering whether some of the staff are regreting their decision in some ways: They said the reason was that it was purely to keep the safari park 'ethos' and that they didn't want to build a bull corral, yet today both rhinos and sometimes tigers use such corrals; indeed Winston the bull rhino spends most of his time within a sand yard less than a third of an acre or so in size.
 
I guess it was more of the fact that they just they couldn't afford it, so they gave them up for that reason and said it was on an ethical purpose to make them look good.
Is there any news of the breeding in France?
 
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