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THAT
question has been bugging the Alaska Zoo board of
directors for quite a time now, as it came under
increasing pressure to relocate the South African
elephant that has delighted thousands of people in
Anchorage for 24 years now.
The
pressure to relocate comes not just from animal-rights
activists that consider it “cruel” to insist on keeping
an animal that they say belongs to the wild and should
be among its own. The more immediate pressure comes from
a long list of health problems that may or may not
account for Maggie’s known grumpiness—precisely the
reason why zoo officials have said she can’t be
relocated to other places where she’d have to learn to
interact with other elephants.
Maggie’s
health problems are something else. Besides the
supercold temperatures in Alaska, which prorelocation
groups have said is making life difficult for an
elephant more suited to warmer climes, Maggie has
struggled with her weight for the longest time.
Early
last year, Maggie made the headlines when zoo officials
and concerned philanthropists, anxious over
veterinarians’ warnings that Maggie was too obese (9,000
pounds) for her own good, came up with the novel idea of
building the world’s largest treadmill for her. They
were told that changing her diet wasn’t good enough.
A good
Samaritan coughed up the $100,000 needed to fabricate
the treadmill and voilà!—it was built not long after.
But then, as subsequent reports in The Associated Press
and elsewhere indicated, coaxing the grumpy, obese
elephant to walk up the treadmill was next to
impossible. Her handlers and doctors tried everything to
get her to use it.
After
months of patient coaxing, they apparently succeeded,
because by late 2006, according to an account in
Business Club International (a publication of the
International Health, Racquet and Sportclubs
Association), Maggie already had results to show for.
She had shed 1,000 pounds and was down to 8,000 pounds.
The
article sounded very upbeat about Maggie’s health and
future.
But more
recent reports on Maggie indicate she’s been having even
more problems—and generating even more controversy.
Two
recent “lying down incidents,” as they called it,
increased the concern that she still wasn’t trim enough
to be able to bear her own weight, after lying down on
her side and being unable to stand up again. Reports
said “her abrasions are healing,” but this has not
stopped those calling for her to be freed from the
Alaska zoo to press their case.
A
reporter for Anchorage Daily News, Megan Holland,
reported on Wednesday that zoo officials had met Tuesday
night “to discuss the future of Maggie, Alaska’s lone
elephant, and decided they needed more time to consult
with experts, review public opinion and find out what
options exist for Maggie outside of Alaska.”
“All
they want is for Maggie to be healthy,” Holland quoted
zoo director Pat Lampi as saying after the meeting.
The zoo
has received thousands of e-mails since asking the
public last week to air their views on the options
available for Maggie, Lampi reportedly said. These
opinions, along with the advice of elephant experts,
will be part of the basis for the zoo board’s decision
at its meeting next week.
According to Holland’s report, board president Dick
Thwaites had indicated that the Alaska zoo “was
contacting zoos across the country to see what they
could offer Maggie.” Initially, one of the best bets was
the North Carolina Zoo, which has a 37-acre African
Plains exhibit, per its web site.
The
group In Defense of Animals, which wants Maggie moved to
a warmer climate, has accused the officials of ignoring
a 2004 report saying 10 of 11 experts who were consulted
by the Alaska Zoo had voted for transferring Maggie—a
matter that Thwaites denied.
Holland’s
account quoted him as saying, “We agree with most of the
experts. We do agree that, generally speaking, for an
elephant that’s the best thing [to be with other
elephants].”
Still,
Thwaites was quoted as saying, it might not be the best
thing for Maggie, described as a domineering elephant
that may not adjust well with other elephants or to
changes in her routine. Yet that, insist some critics,
may only be because she has lived alone for most of her
life, having been orphaned at less than a year old.
Female African elephants, as a rule, are very sociable
animals and observe some multitiered organizational
delineations.
The 2004
report by a five-member committee evaluated views of
elephant experts from around the
US
and Canada, and most said Maggie would be better off
elsewhere. According to Holland’s report, the lone
dissenter, Dr. Jim Oosterhuis of the
San Diego
Wild Animal Park, “said the animal could stay in Alaska
if she was provided proper exercise, softer flooring in
her enclosure and more interaction with her handlers.
The zoo has spent $900,000 to improve Maggie’s living
conditions, Thwaites said. It has not, however, met all
of the goals, including the soft flooring, which is
estimated to cost another $100,000, he said.”
In the
2004 report, Lampi supposedly said that spending money
on Maggie could deprive other animals of scarce budgets,
and that it might indeed be wiser to move her rather
than deal with an interminable list of problems. By not
relocating her then, the zoo has thus been grappling
with such problems for the past three years, except for
that brief moment of triumph when Maggie was some sort
of a poster girl for the obese trying to lose weight,
with that image of her on the giant treadmill.
Perhaps
like the human poster girls for weight-loss programs,
Maggie ironically has become a victim of her own modest
success. Losing 1,000 pounds on a treadmill may have, in
turn, put too much pressure on her legs, causing the
recent “lying down” incidents, where weight-bearing
activities have proved too much for her. Who knows? That
has happened to lots of women—and not a few athletically
inclined old people we know have had knee operations in
their 60s, and regret the heavy jogging they did in
their younger days, mostly on hard ground.
So, if
Maggie finally moves to warmer climes, what will happen
to her vaunted $100,000 giant treadmill?
It made
for an interesting experiment—and cute headlines and
photos. But at the rate things are going, it seems
destined for the museum. Unless some film producer does
a sequel for an athletically inclined King Kong.
Hmmm....
--L.M.Fernandez |
