Winnie Kiiru presentation in Toronto

Zoocheck Canada held an informative presentation in Toronto about the struggles of African Elephants.

The Elephants of Africa: Giants of the Wild, was held at the 519 Church Street Community Centre March 23. Winnie Kiiru, a wildlife biologist from Kenya, Africa, talked about the challenges that elephants face, not only in Africa, but in Canada as well.

In a small room of about 27 people, Kiiru began by describing how three elephants from the Toronto Zoo are going to be transported to the Performing Animals Welfare Society (PAWS) animal sanctuary, in California.

“It’s a great time for people in Toronto. It may look like a small victory, but to be able to move those three elephants to PAWS is going to be great,” said Kiiru at the presentation.

Moving the elephants will not only benefit those three, but will give more room for the other elephants left at the zoo, although the conditions still won’t be anything near what they should be.

“This is just the beginning. It’s a difficult battle, and we really haven’t done enough yet, there’s so much to do. There are some very unhappy elephants all around Canada, some that I have seen myself. And you need to really have a role to remove every single elephant from the zoos around Canada. So the struggle continues,” added Kiiru.

In 2006, Zoocheck Canada had worked with Kiiru travelling all around Canada to the different zoos, to see the elephants in their captive environments. Now, six years later, Kiiru returned to raise more awareness about elephant issues.

“Over the years, we’ve had involvement in supporting causes. Sometimes it’s as simple as writing a letter, other times funding. What you find in this field is that there are a lot of interconnections between people, individuals, as well as the organizations, and we all help each other out. So we’re not now directly involved in field conservation in Kenya, but if we can assist by helping Winnie get her message out about what she’s doing in the fight of elephants in the wild, than we see that as something that we should be doing. So there was an opportunity to do a talk here in Toronto, and a talk in London, to use that to generate wider awareness through social media, so why not,” said Rob Laidlaw, Executive Director of Zoocheck Canada.

Elephants in the wild can live up to 70 years. On average, elephants in captivity only live to 30 or 40 years. Foot problems are the leading cause of death in captive elephants.

“Elephants feet are basically made with a pad at the bottom which wares as they walk. Elephants walk a minimum of 10 km a day, just eating. They are on their feet for 18 hours, and they only sleep for about, if at all, six hours. So their feet are actually made for walking. So the reason why you have your elephants dying of feet problems is because they develop arthritis, and other problems of the feet, because they are not using them for what they were made to,” said Kiiru.

With all the negative impacts of having elephants in zoos, the only reason to have them there is for human purposes. But people aren’t benefiting anything either.

“They are trying to convince zoo visitors that their very purpose for being is education and conservation and yet what are you seeing? You’re seeing elephants behaving in a way that you would never see them in the wild, so you’re not learning anything about elephant behaviour. And number two, that they’re not actually benefiting conservation in the wild, what they are really doing is breeding animals to replenish the zoo populations to keep visitors coming through the door,” said Julie Woodyer, campaigns director for Zoocheck Canada.

Another major issue Kiiru touched on is human-elephant conflict in Africa. Wild elephants will sometimes eat and destroy farmers’ crops and livestock. In response to this, the farmers will kill the elephants. In order to avoid this, Conservation Kenya can reimburse the people so that they will have no need to harm the elephants. But they need money to accomplish this, something that is in short supply from the zoos in Canada.

“You need to question zoos. When you say you are putting money into conservation where is it going? Are you putting the money into human-elephant conflict, real money, solving real problems? For every million dollars that your’e spending building a prison what percentage of that do you really send to the elephants that are roaming free in the wild? These are the questions that you need to keep asking your zoos, because they are selling their agenda, using Africa, and really nothing of what they are doing is affecting real conservation,” said Kiiru.