Senator Andrew Bartlett
Thursday, July 21, 2005
 
Animal Stories II – Putting an Elephant in a cage is like putting a whale in an aquarium

One year ago today, I put out a media release urging the federal Environment Minister to refuse to issue permits allowing the import of endangered Asian elephants into Australian zoos. Yesterday, after obviously spending a lot of time thinking about it, the Minister decided to side with the zoos in pretending this is supposedly an environmental measure rather than primarily a commercial one.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised when the major parties make decisions in favour of commercial interests rather than environmental or animal welfare interests, but I had hoped that the clear-cut intent of the federal environment law (the Environment Protection & Biodiversity Conservation Act) would actually be adhered to on this occasion.

I have been personally involved in significantly strengthening this Act over the last few years. While it is far from perfect, it is clearly stronger than what was there before (not that that stopped the Greens from strongly attacking me for agreeing to something that wasn’t perfect). However, after decisions like this, it makes you wonder what the point is putting in the effort improving laws, when the Minister administering them so willingly ignores them - not that that is a reason for leaving the laws even weaker, but it does make the whole lawmaking thing seem fairly pointless.

We will find out whether this decision to import endangered elephants into Australian zoos breaches the letter of the law rather than just the intent and spirit of it, as the decision is being appealed by animal welfare groups the Humane Society International, International Fund for Animal Welfare and the RSPCA.

As this statement by elephant experts from the region says, there is a good case to be made that importing endangered Asian elephants into zoos just encourages the illegal trade in this endangered species. It also gives people false belief that something meaningful is being done to help preserve the species and diverts resources and attention away from actions that would actually help, such as maintaining the elephants’ natural habitat. If the habitat is lost, then having captive bred elephants sitting in zoos around the world won’t help much.

Whilst it is possible that these elephants may have a few offspring in our zoos, these will just be used to replenish zoo stocks (and draw in more dollars through people coming to look at the cute baby elephant), not replenish the species in the wild.

Putting aside the implausible claim that this is an altruistic action to help the survival of the species, there is the even more clear-cut fact that putting elephants in any sort of cage, no matter how big, is blatantly inhumane. Elephants roam over large distances in family groups and confining them is akin to putting a few whales in a big aquarium. Some Australian zoos have improved a lot over the last decade or two in the conditions they keep their animals in, but we cannot kid ourselves that it is possible to come even close to meeting an elephant’s behavioural needs in a closed zoo environment. That is not an ‘anti-zoo’ statement, it is a simple fact.

This letter by some experts in the elephant field (including Professor Clive Phillips, the Director of the Centre for Animal Welfare and Ethics at the University of Queensland) shows the animal welfare and environmental shortcomings of the whole scheme.

Last year, the Detroit Zoo announced it was voluntarily closing its elephant exhibit. As the zoo’s Director said,
“it is important that we provide all animals in captivity with a socially and physically healthy environment. We now more fully understand an elephant’s needs. Just as Polar Bears don’t thrive in hot climates, Asian elephants shouldn’t live in small groups without many acres to roam.”
We may have been able to kid ourselves a decade or so ago that elephants didn’t suffer in captivity, but the fact that Taronga Zoo is still propagating the fiction that their elephant facility addresses animal welfare standards makes it very hard to give any credibility to pronouncements from the Taronga Zoo about the wellbeing of the animals in their facility.

The fact is that the federal Minister is under no legal obligation to consider the welfare and suffering of the animals. This is why I believe we need animal welfare laws at the national level, to make it a legal requirement that the welfare and potential suffering of animals get taken into account in decisions like this.

I am not naïve enough to think that commercial exploitation of animals is going to stop any time soon or that the suffering of animals will start outweighing commercial factors. But the fact that we are using environment laws to provide a cover for inflicting this suffering is, to put it mildly, disappointing.

UPDATE: According to this report, the Government’s decision has been branded “shabby and corrupt” by a Bangkok newspaper, which it suggests is linked to a return deal by Australia to allow 10 Australian species such as kangaroos and koalas to be imported to Thailand.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Thursday, July 21, 2005 Permalink
|


<< Home