Elephants

Los Angeles Zoo keepers Sunday appealed to city officials to complete a $42-million elephant enclosure, saying it would be the best place for Billy, the zoo's lone remaining elephant, to breed and thrive. The exhibit, they said, would allow for more exercise and stimulation than an animal refuge, where critics have suggested the 23-year-old Asian bull be sent. Creation of the 3.

Tom Rider, who used to be a "barn man" for Ringling Bros., said that when he worked there in the late 1990s, he regularly saw handlers of the circus' endangered Asian elephants abusing the giant creatures. He said they used long, sharp-hooked poles, "hitting them in the legs, hooking them behind the ears" and leaving gashes the size of his finger. Ringling denies the allegations, saying it has never been cited for animal cruelty.

South Africa announced Monday that it would allow the killing of elephants as a population control, a move strongly condemned by animal welfare groups. Beginning in May, the government will lift a 13-year ban on elephant culls, usually carried out by shooting entire herds, including youngsters, from helicopters. The move could hurt the country's tourist industry, with animal welfare lobbies calling for a tourist boycott to protest culling.

Tai the elephant is no stranger to fame. The 39-year-old female has a long resume: TV commercials, corporate parties and 20 movie credits. "She has such a reputation that people ask for her by name," said Kari Johnson, a co-owner of Have Trunk Will Travel. The company operates a ranch in Perris for nine endangered Asian elephants, which often work in show business. Tai is the most famous, she said. But as with human celebrity, with the spotlight sometimes comes controversy.

There comes a day when even the most popular of shows has to close. "Oklahoma!," "Cats," even "The Lion King" -- each dazzled Broadway for years and then departed. And so the elephant show at the Wild Animal Park, an attraction at Tembo Stadium since 1977, the most popular show in park history, will close Sunday. The puppet and bird shows will remain, but the five Asian elephants who star in the elephant show are off to a new gig.

The Los Angeles Zoo's controversial pachyderm exhibit was hardly the proverbial elephant in the room Wednesday during a packed L.A. City Council meeting. Far from being an unspoken issue, the topic consumed 4 1/2 hours of discussion. People cheered and groaned as wildlife experts, animal welfare activists, impassioned schoolteachers, zoo lovers, a former game show host-cum-animal cause philanthropist (Bob Barker) and council members weighed in on the future of elephants in the city.

For years, controversy has swirled around the elephants at the Los Angeles Zoo. Every elephant death was scrutinized; every public hearing about the animals was filled with protesters. It's no coincidence that the largest land mammal has prompted the largest and longest-running public relations problem for the zoo. Critics contend that the zoo has never had sufficient space to keep the lumbering behemoths.

After weeks of impassioned and lengthy debates over elephants and whether the world's largest land mammals still belong in the Los Angeles Zoo, supporters and critics alike got only a tentative verdict Wednesday: The City Council halted construction of the zoo's controversial $42-million elephant exhibit but did not outright kill it. The project seemed headed for extinction but for an 11th-hour proposal from the zoo's fundraising arm, the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Assn.

Researchers have concluded that female elephants living in protected environments in Asia and Africa live longer than elephants in captivity in European zoos, saying that "bringing elephants into zoos profoundly impairs their viability." The study, to be released today in the journal Science, also found that for an Asian elephant -- the more endangered of the two elephant species -- being born in a zoo or separated from its mother at an early age can mean a shorter life.

Small farmers and villagers here see them as cunning, destructive and dangerous beasts whose very name conjures up death. In the West, elephants are perhaps the most beloved of the big game species and tourists fly thousands of miles just to see one. So South Africa's proposal, unveiled Wednesday, to thin elephant herds by methods that include shooting them was bound to spark controversy.