Alaskan Elephant Finds Her Place in the Sun
Anchorage zoo agrees to move its lone elephant to California after a lengthy debate that has pitched the interests of the 25-year-old animal against those keen to keep the state's only elephant at the zoo.
Maggie the elephant packed her trunk and said goodbye to Alaska at the weekend. The zoo in Anchorage has finally agreed to move its lone elephant to California after a lengthy debate that has pitched the interests of the 25-year-old animal against those keen to keep the state's only elephant at the zoo.
Maggie, an African elephant originally from Zimbabwe, will be an unusual and single passenger aboard a US air force C-17 transport plane flying to California's Travis air force base on Thursday. She will be flown inside a crate for the 12-hour journey.
Once in California she will be taken to her new home, a sanctuary run by the Performing Animal Welfare Society in San Andreas, near Sacramento. The conditions there should be more conducive to the good health of the elephant than the cold of Alaska.
At the sanctuary, where temperatures at the weekend were 24C (75F), Maggie will be living with nine other elephants. The conditions are in stark contrast to her previous lodgings, where temperatures rose to just 2C (35F) on Sunday.
In Anchorage Maggie, who has been alone since the death of the zoo's other elephant, Annabelle, 10 years ago, lived in an elephant house with concrete floors and a small outside enclosure.
The debate over her conditions had rumbled on for years, but the decision to move her came this summer after the Anchorage fire department was called out twice in one week to hoist her to her feet because she was unable to stand unaided.
An earlier attempt by the zoo board to offset the criticism of Maggie's condition ended in failure. They bought her a $70,000 treadmill but the animal refused to climb on to it.
After the zoo board decided to move Maggie in June, TV personality Bob Barker, retired host of US game show The Price is Right, traveled to Anchorage to lobby for the elephant to be sent to the Paws sanctuary in California. "She will have acres and acres of land to roam over," he said during a visit to the zoo. "In the wild, elephants walk as much as 50 miles a day. Maggie is going to walk to her heart's content. Over grass, with trees around her, beautiful surroundings."
The charity paid the $200,000 cost of the one-way ticket. African elephants have been known to live for 70 years.
Maggie, an African elephant originally from Zimbabwe, will be an unusual and single passenger aboard a US air force C-17 transport plane flying to California's Travis air force base on Thursday. She will be flown inside a crate for the 12-hour journey.
Once in California she will be taken to her new home, a sanctuary run by the Performing Animal Welfare Society in San Andreas, near Sacramento. The conditions there should be more conducive to the good health of the elephant than the cold of Alaska.
At the sanctuary, where temperatures at the weekend were 24C (75F), Maggie will be living with nine other elephants. The conditions are in stark contrast to her previous lodgings, where temperatures rose to just 2C (35F) on Sunday.
In Anchorage Maggie, who has been alone since the death of the zoo's other elephant, Annabelle, 10 years ago, lived in an elephant house with concrete floors and a small outside enclosure.
The debate over her conditions had rumbled on for years, but the decision to move her came this summer after the Anchorage fire department was called out twice in one week to hoist her to her feet because she was unable to stand unaided.
An earlier attempt by the zoo board to offset the criticism of Maggie's condition ended in failure. They bought her a $70,000 treadmill but the animal refused to climb on to it.
After the zoo board decided to move Maggie in June, TV personality Bob Barker, retired host of US game show The Price is Right, traveled to Anchorage to lobby for the elephant to be sent to the Paws sanctuary in California. "She will have acres and acres of land to roam over," he said during a visit to the zoo. "In the wild, elephants walk as much as 50 miles a day. Maggie is going to walk to her heart's content. Over grass, with trees around her, beautiful surroundings."
The charity paid the $200,000 cost of the one-way ticket. African elephants have been known to live for 70 years.
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