Tomorrow, December 3rd, the City Council could well decide the fate of Billy the elephant, the lone elephant currently living at the L.A. Zoo.
Two years ago L.A. voters and the City Council approved a forty-two million dollar, 3.6 acre elephant exhibit at the L.A Zoo. I voted for that exhibit.
At the time it seemed a no-brainer. How could you not vote for any measure that can give some help to animals? But, like many voters, I wasn’t aware then of how bad restrictive zoo life is for elephants' health. I certainly didn't know that thirteen elephants had died in L.A. just since the 1970s, nor did I know that elephants in the wild travel miles and miles of territory. As reported in the L.A. Times, Zoo officials insist Billy will have “waterfalls, pools, mud wallows and various surfaces to tread, all of which would encourage natural behaviors and exercise.”
Which begs the question, would you be willing to live in a closet if you had an MP3 player and an awesome flat screen TV?
Now Councilman Tony Cardenas wants the City Council to halt construction and build a more appropriate-sized sanctuary for Billy, or relocate him to an existing sanctuary that can give him the space, companionship and stimulation elephants need to live happy lives.
As for the lone resident of the current exhibit, one could make the argument that Billy’s been trying to make his feelings known for years. The question is: are we listening?
Billy bobs his head up and down constantly. Animal advocates, who it’s hard to say have any stake in the debate except the welfare of animals, say this bobbing is a sign of Billy’s mental disturbance. Zoo officials have responded that Billy bobbed his head even before he came to live in Los Angeles – a response baffling in its illogic, suggesting only that if animal advocates are right about what the bobbing means, Billy’s been very unhappy for a very long time.
According to the Times, a November 20th City Council meeting grew heated when the fate of Billy and the proposed exhibit came up for discussion.
"’I've been to South Africa," Councilman Dennis Zine said, noting that he had seen elephants in their natural habitat. ‘It's a huge, huge animal. It doesn't belong in an enclosure.’
Councilman Tom LaBonge, a fierce supporter of the zoo, said that not everyone in Los Angeles has the means to go to South Africa to view elephants in the wild and that the elephant exhibit should be completed.
’Everyone can get down the 101 Freeway to Griffith Park to the zoo,’ he said.”
It seems Councilman LaBonge feels that people have the right to see an elephant, if not in Africa, then in Los Angeles. The only logical response to that contention is, “Even if it causes pain and premature death for the elephant?”
As a child growing up in the East, I went to the zoo many times. This was an old school zoo offering little more than barren concrete enclosures. I don’t think I learned much of value about nature staring at a sad elephant with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Besides listless elephants, I remember a huge gorilla sitting, bored and passive, barely moving, and jaguars and lions pacing back and forth endlessly. Thirty years later I’m haunted by the fact that what I was watching was beautiful animals suffering desolate, unhealthy existences, slowly being driven crazy by the emptiness of their days. Billy is twenty-three and he could live to be sixty or seventy, either enjoying life, or bobbing his head in a continual desperate attempt to communicate his unhappiness.
I don’t think that’s what our children need to learn at the L.A. Zoo. I can’t speak for everyone who voted for the exhibit years ago, but I didn't vote for it because I felt it was my right as a voter to have elephants on display, I did it because I hoped it would help them. It seems they won’t be happy in the proposed exhibit, so why not give our children a lifelong lesson in compassion, admit our mistake, and give Billy the happy, meaningful life I believe he deserves as much as we do.
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