Elephants get new zoo space

By Carrie Coppernoll

Published: April 6, 2008

When Asian elephants Asha and Chandra return from Tulsa, they'll live in a home much different from the one they left.

The future mothers and their offspring will reside in the new Asia exhibit, a $16 million project scheduled to open in spring 2011. The four- or five-acre exhibit will be the most expensive project ever completed at the Oklahoma City Zoo, said Brian Aucone, the zoo's interim director. The elephant habitat alone will cost about $10 million, the same price paid for the seven-acre Oklahoma Trails exhibit.

There will be plenty of room for more elephants, Aucone said. In addition to Asha, Chandra and their young, the new exhibit will likely be home to one or two bulls and possibly some elderly females, Aucone said.

The elephant habitat will feature a barn with three or four yards, with at least one for females and one for a male. The elephants will be rotated among the yards. The area will have more natural surfaces, including a dirt surface in the new barn, instead of concrete like the elephants' current barn in Oklahoma City. The design will include a maternity area where the elephants can bear their young.

Outdated elephant exhibits like the one in Oklahoma City are slowly being phased out across the country, said Mike Keele, deputy director of the Oregon Zoo and chairman of the Elephant Species Survival Plan, the national elephant population master plan.

During the 1950s and '60s, the zoo world had a boom in elephant imports and therefore elephant habitat construction. The elephant habitat at the Oklahoma City Zoo was built in the 1950s.

"Elephants are really strong animals so it made sense to build these fortresses they couldn't tear down,” Keele said. But the fortresses weren't exactly comfortable for the elephants. They often were chained at night when zookeepers left, and walking on concrete day after day gave many of the animals arthritis and foot problems.

Zoo administrators began changing elephant living conditions in the 1990s, and conditions continue to improve, Keele said.

"There's been a huge renaissance in zoos and how we take care of animals in general,” Keele said.

Male elephants pose a housing problem. In the wild, female elephants live together in herds, Aucone said. Males are usually solitary but move through a herd to breed. Males housed together are likely to tussle.

"A lot of facilities can only hold one male,” Aucone said.

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