Saving Elderly Elephants Living in Solitary Misery
Humane Talk (02-26-2018) #8059: Ulara Nakagawa, the organizer of Elephants in Japan, describes how her group is lobbying to save the 14 remaining elderly elephants living in solitary misery in private zoos across Japan. The Elephants in Japan: In Memory of Hanako campaign works to ensure that no other elephant will have to endure the solitary imprisonment of an elephant named Hanako, who died alone in 2016. Taken away from her family in Thailand as a baby in 1949, this elephant was forced to live most of her 69 years alone, in a small concrete enclosure in a Tokyo zoo. She had no soft dirt or grass to stand on or freedom to roam. She was deprived of any true, lasting companionship of her own kind, which is crucial to an elephant’s overall well-being. Elephants in Japan works to better educate people in that country and worldwide about elephant welfare, and works to expose and improve the living conditions of the many other captive zoo elephants worldwide.
