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Treatment of elephants condemned
By Peter Gruner, Evening Standard Last updated at 00:00am on 23.10.02British zoos' handling of elephants has been condemned today in the wake of a hard-hitting report commissioned by the RSPCA.
The society singled out London Zoo and Whipsnade Wild Animal Park as organisations that put keepers at risk by using the traditional "hands-on" system - where keepers share space with their animals.
Dr Rob Atkinson, head of wildlife for the society, said: "I am 100 per cent convinced that the reason for deaths of keepers, like that at London Zoo, is because of the free contact hands-on system."
The report is published in the run-up to next month's anniversary of the death of London Zoo keeper Jim Robson last year. Mr Robson, 45, died from a fractured skull when one of the zoo's three female Burmese elephants tossed him to the ground and stamped on his head.
The three animals, Mya, Layang-Layang and Dilberta have since been moved to the zoo's sister enclosure Whipsnade Wild Animal Park.
While Dr Atkinson accepted that the elephants had more space at Whipsnade, he criticised the wildlife park for using the same free-contact handling system.
He said: "In the vast majority of our zoos, elephant handlers try and dominate elephants by psychological means, physical restriction and punishment - a system known as traditional free contact."
While elephants are still kept in zoos, the RSPCA wants their management to be based on reward, not punishment, and for keepers to be protected from death and injury.
The report, by Oxford University, suggested that elephants in captivity had about half the 30-year lifespan of their counterparts working in Asian timber camps.
Elephants in European zoos died young because they suffered from deficient enclosures, poor diet, illness and inappropriate social grouping.
Today's report was initiated before the death of Mr Robson, and doesn't mention any zoo or organisation by name, but Dr Atkinson admitted: "Its urgency would have been underlined by the accident at London Zoo. The keeper shares the same space as the animals and sets himself up as the dominant member of the herd.
"But, if anybody handles elephants in this way, then they must expect death or serious injury at some point.
"Free contact is dangerous and not based on any biological system; elephants do not go around bullying each other or trying to assert dominance. They are gentle beasts and they tend to look up to the dominant animal who is the oldest, biggest and wisest."
The report urges zoos to go for protected contact, meaning that keeper and animals do not share the same space.
Chris West, zoological director of the Zoological Society of London, said the call for a shift to protected contact was something that needed to be researched, adding: "Protected contact has not been used extensively for a very long time. It's not fail-safe - accidents do happen.
"It is an unfair generalisation to describe elephant management as psychological domination. There are close and warm bonds between elephants and keepers - as there were at London Zoo - and it's positive reinforcement rather than negative reinforcement.
"There's an assumption by the RSPCA that elephants cannot be kept properly in captivity, but many standard-setting zoos can keep and breed elephants successfully."
