The best decision for them
Zoos have a accountability to do what’s greatest for his or her animals, even when it means making a troublesome resolution.
Now, the Louisville Zoo is on the brink of say goodbye to 2 of its beloved, longtime elephants, who shall be moved to a sanctuary.
The zoo, positioned in Kentucky, made the announcement yesterday that their two remaining elephants — a 37-year-old African elephant named Mikki and a 53-year-old Asian elephant named Punch — could be relocated to The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee.
In a video, zoo director Dan Maloney mentioned that they had been on the “crossroads of custom and actuality.” Whereas elephants have been a beloved a part of the zoo for many years, they defined that shifting them could be of their greatest curiosity.
The zoo’s website explains that after the demise of Mikki’s calf Fitz final 12 months, there are actually solely two elephants, under the AZA commonplace of three in an exhibit. Elephants are very smart and social animals who have to be round others of their very own sort.
On prime of that, Mikki and Punch are each getting old: Punch is “thought-about geriatric,” whereas Mikki is “gracefully coming into her senior years.” The zoo needed to take preemptive motion to make sure that when certainly one of them dies, the opposite will nonetheless have companionship.
The pair will transfer to the Elephant Sanctuary in 2025. The sanctuary is the biggest natural-habitat elephant refuge within the nation, and they’ll have over 3,000 acres to roam — and simply as importantly, loads of different elephants to socialize with.
The transfer will certainly come as bittersweet information for workers and longtime guests. Each elephants have been longtime fixtures of the zoo: Punch arrived in Louisville in 1973, and Mikki arrived in 1987. Whereas they are going to be missed, shifting to a sanctuary is within the animals’ greatest curiosity.
“I like elephants dearly and I’ll miss Punch and Mikki terribly, however I do know that is the perfect resolution for them,” Dan Maloney mentioned.
The zoo mentioned they’d spend the following 12 months making ready the elephants for his or her large transfer, utilizing coaching workouts to situation them to the crates they are going to be transported in.
In addition they wrote that they’d proceed to help elephant conservation, and supply viewers with reside digital camera feeds of Punch and Mikki of their new habitat.
The elephants’ switch will even enable some helpful adjustments on the zoo: workers will be capable to transfer their southern white rhinos Sindi and Letterman into a bigger space, and use the rhinos’ vacated area to doubtlessly welcome okapi, a species that might be new to the Louisville Zoo.
Louisville Zoo is making the best resolution right here — thanks for prioritizing the wellbeing of those lovely senior elephants. We hope they may get pleasure from their new house on the sanctuary subsequent 12 months ❤️
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