Zoos must not keep elephants, demands report by RSPCA

British and European zoos should stop keeping elephants, the RSPCA said yesterday, because the animals suffer grim conditions and poor welfare, and die young.

They endure inadequate diet, illness, deficient enclosures, inappropriate social grouping and rough treatment at the hands of their keepers, the RSPCA says, and have much shorter lives than elephants in the wild or even working elephants in Asia.

In a report commissioned by the society, two Oxford University scientists, Ros Clubb and Georgia Mason, lay out a range of welfare problems they say makes the captivity unacceptable. They say adult elephants in European zoos have half the 30-year lifespan of their counterparts working in Asian timber camps. In the wild they could expect to reach 60 or 65. The RSPCA is calling for urgent changes in zoo practice and for elephants to be phased out of zoo collections.

The society has already raised the issue, after the death in London Zoo a year ago this week of elephant-keeper Jim Robson, who was trampled to death in front of visitors. After its detailed study of elephants in captivity, the RSPCA says there is "no evidence European zoos are able to keep elephants satisfactorily long-term".

More than 500 elephants, just under half of the world's zoo elephant population, are held in Europe; in Britain a total of 90 animals (46 African and 44 Asian) are in zoos. Last week, possibly anticipating the RSPCA move, the Federation of UK Zoos produced the first detailed elephant welfare and management guidelines, which improve considerably on past practice, saying zoos should conform to them or give their elephants up.

But the thrust of the RSPCA report is that elephants, which normally have huge territories, are unsuited to captivity under any conditions. The study refers to zoos across Europe. Sixty per cent of elephants in zoos that survive to adulthood die through illness, it claims, with many suffering painful conditions such as arthritis.

Zoo breeding programmes have an "abysmal" record, the report says, with 35 per cent of females failing to breed, 15 to 25 per cent of Asian elephant babies stillborn, and 6 to 18 per cent rejected or even killed by their mothers.

Control is also a problem, the report says. "In [most] of our zoos, elephant-handlers try to dominate elephants by psychological means, physical restriction and punishment, a system known as traditional free contact," Dr Rob Atkinson, the RSPCA head of wildlife, says. "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. Circus-style displays must also become a thing of the past."

Enclosures generally lack stimulation, the society says, and can be 60 to 100 times smaller than the smallest wild territories, and 90 per cent of those in Europe have no grazing. For most elephants the European climate may be too cold and wet and they can spend up to 18 hours indoors in cold weather.

Elephants are often kept in unnatural social groups, the report says, with age structures different from those of wild populations and with unrelated individuals. "Strong lifelong bonds between females are frequently broken when they are transported to other facilities or separated. Single elephants are increasingly moved away from their social groups, and mothers are hardly ever transferred with their offspring.

"Given this dismal testimony, the conservation argument put forward by zoos for the keeping of these majestic creatures is turned on its head, and leaves the RSPCA to conclude that elephant populations must be phased out of zoos, with an immediate end to breeding and importation."