Kenya's elephants dying amid drought

A drought in Kenya has gotten so bad that it is felling even the giants of the animal kingdom — the country's famed elephants which are dying as rivers dry up and grasslands shrivel in parched game reserves.

The bones of the elephants bleaching under a relentless African sun underscore how bad the drought is. It has killed hundreds of cattle and many acres of crops, threatening the lives of people who depended on them for food. There are no tallies of deaths among people attributed to the drought but the U.N.'s World Food program said recently that 3.8 million Kenyans are at risk and need emergency food aid.

Zoologist Iain Douglas-Hamilton, who founded Save the Elephants, said the drought is the worst he has seen in 12 years and poses a serious threat to the large and majestic animals, whose striking silhouettes roaming Kenya's broad savannah help draw 1 million tourists each year.

"It may be related to climate change, and the effect is elephants, particularly the young and the old, have began to die," he told AP Television News on Monday. "When they do not have enough food they also seem to be vulnerable to disease, their immune system weakens and they catch all sorts of diseases."

Instead of majestic, many elephants are pitiable.

Elephants, which have no predators, must roam widely to get their daily ration of as much as 52 gallons of water and about 660 pounds of grass, leaves and twigs. But the water is disappearing and the grass is all but gone.

NY firehouse ordered to close for jumbo-sized photo-op

A firefighters union says a New York City engine company had to close its firehouse for 30 minutes to bathe a circus elephant on city orders.

The Uniformed Firefighters Association says Brooklyn's Engine Company 245 didn't want to participate in the photo opportunity with circus elephant Suzie, part of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey show in Coney Island. But it says city officials ordered the engine company to participate.

The firehouse closed Wednesday while four firefighters and an officer went to scrub Suzie. About 10 firefighters stayed behind.

The fire department says firefighters were only supposed to spray the elephant when it walked by the firehouse and weren't ordered to close. It says closing the firehouse was a mistake.

It hasn't said if any emergency calls came in while the firehouse was closed.

-- Associated Press

Texas man can keep one elephant, not three; chooses his Boo

It's like "Sophie's Choice," except with pachyderms. A man in East Texas gave up his battle with regulators who claimed he was not caring properly for his three elephants: Boo, Jewel and Tina. So he agreed to pay a few thousand dollars in fines and send Jewel and Tina to a zoo, according to the Associated Press.

Willie Davenport, 24, of Leggett, who comes from a family involved in circuses, has denied mistreating the elephants named Boo, Jewel and Tina.

But on Thursday, Davenport gave up 40-year-old Jewel and 39-year-old Tina, both Asian elephants, to end his fight with regulators. He will keep Boo, who has been with his family since the 1960s.

Davenport also agreed to pay a $3,000 fine in exchange for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service dropping complaints against him for failing to have proper purchasing permits for Jewel and Tina. Davenport said he bought the animals for $150,000 from a retiring elephant trainer in Florida in 2006.

Both elephants were deemed to be dangerously underweight, and U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors had filed documents to seize Jewel because of chronic weight loss and alleged inadequate veterinary care.

USDA spokesman Dave Sacks said Jewel and Tina would be taken to a zoo.

"I am sad. This is not just my loss, but East Texas is losing their elephants. They have touched a lot of people," Davenport said. "This is their home."

An animal rescue group, In Defense of Animals, had complained to federal authorities about Davenport and sought to have all three elephants removed from his barn.

Last Friday a breeder in Texas was arrested when it was discovered that 76 Arabian horses were emaciated.

Update: Saturday Jewel and Tina were delivered to the San Diego Zoo.

-- Tony Pierce

In a photo taken Aug. 17, 2009, Willie Davenport, 24, pets Jewel, a 44-year-old Asian elephant, as Boo, 54, walks nearby in Leggett, Texas. (AP Photo / Houston Chronicle, Johnny Hanson)

Gay, the elephant, gets some new shoes

Several days ago, Unleashed posted a story on Motola, a 48-year-old elephant in Thailand who lost part of her left front foot from stepping on a land mine. Her caretakers, a private group called the Friends of the Asian Elephant, fitted her with a prosthesis so she can continue to walk on all four legs.

In similar elephant-limb news, caretakers at the Paignton Zoo Environmental Park in England have created shoes for Gay, an Asian elephant who suffers from foot abscesses. After making sketches of Gay's foot, the caretakers sent patterns to a company in Australia to design and create specially made shoes for the elephant. It's estimated that each of the shoes costs around $350.

Ghislaine Sayers, head of veterinary services at the zoo, said: "The boots will help to keep the feet clean between baths and allow us to put on dressings that will help to remove dead tissue, decrease infection and promote healing.

"Elephants can get sore feet for all sorts of reasons -- posture, age, arthritis, lack of exercise, even a genetic predisposition to foot disease."

In addition to the shoes, the zoo has laid down 100 tons of sand and rubber matting to provide Gay with a more comfortable surface to walk on.

-- Sarah Ardalani

Motola the 48-year-old elephant walks with her artificial leg

LAMPANG, Thailand — Motola, an elephant who lost a foot and part of her leg when she stepped on a land mine 10 years ago, happily if tentatively stepped out Sunday after being fitted with an artificial limb.

In her first stroll with the permanent prosthesis, the 48-year-old female walked out of her enclosure for about 10 minutes, grabbed some dust with her trunk and jubilantly sprayed it in the air.

"It has gone very well — she has walked around twice," said Soraida Salwala, secretary general of the Friends of the Asian Elephant, a private group. "She has not put her whole weight on it yet but she's OK."

Motola was injured in 1999 while working at a logging camp near the Myanmar border, a region peppered with land mines after a half-century of insurgency. Her mangled left front foot was subsequently amputated.

Motola had been wearing a temporary device for three years to strengthen her leg muscles and tendons and to prepare her for the permanent prosthesis. Soraida said Motola has otherwise been in fine health and that her once bony frame now weighs more than 3 tons.

Motola's initial operation used enough anesthetic to floor 70 people — a record noted in the 2000 Guinness Book of World Records.

The artificial leg was made by the Prostheses Foundation, which also makes artificial limbs for human amputees.

Your morning adorable: Asian elephant calf at England's Whipsnade Zoo

A brand-new Asian elephant calf made her media debut today at the Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire, England.  The calf was born last Wednesday to mother Kaylee, 27, who has two older daughters.  At birth, the baby (who doesn't have a name yet) weighed over 270 pounds -- on the heavy side for an Asian elephant calf -- and she was on her feet about five minutes after being born.

Elephants have the longest gestation period of any mammal -- almost 22 months.  See video of the new calf on the Zoological Society of London's YouTube channel -- for more photos, click the jump.

L.A. Zoo officials ordered to report to city council committee over USDA investigation into elephant, chimp deaths

City Councilman Tony Cardenas has ordered Los Angeles Zoo officials to appear before a council committee to discuss the U.S. Department of Agriculture's investigation into the deaths of an elephant and a chimpanzee at the zoo three years ago.

The USDA, which enforces the Animal Welfare Act, cited the zoo for failing to get veterinary care quickly to the animals when they were stricken. (The elephant, Gita, was found down in her enclosure in June of 2006. The next month, a chimpanzee, Judeo, was bitten by a rattlesnake.)

The zoo paid a $3,281 fine, but officials have steadfastly maintained they did everything possible to save both animals. The fine came to public attention only this week.

Cardenas has also directed the city attorney's office to investigate whether the zoo improperly withheld information about the USDA investigation when private citizens made public records requests for it.

RELATED:
L.A. Zoo was fined following 2006 deaths of elephant Gita and chimpanzee Judeo
City Council votes to keep Billy the elephant at the L.A. Zoo

-- Carla Hall

Photo: Gita (in foreground) at the L.A. Zoo in 1999.  Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times

L.A. Zoo was fined following 2006 deaths of Asian elephant Gita and chimpanzee Judeo

The Los Angeles Zoo paid a $3,281 fine as a result of a USDA investigation into the 2006 deaths of Gita, a 48-year-old Asian elephant, and a chimpanzee named Judeo.

Although the fine was paid in January 2008, it wasn't made public until the group In Defense of Animals released the details in a statement Monday.  But according to In Defense of Animals, the relatively small fine is nothing more than "a slap on the wrist" to the zoo and shows that the lives of elephants and other endangered species hold little value to the government agency that issued it.

In Defense of Animals and other advocacy groups argue that Gita's death was the result of negligence on the zoo's part.  A night-shift keeper reportedly noticed she was in distress the evening before she died, but didn't share the information with veterinary staff.  When she was discovered by two other keepers the following morning, it was too late to save her, despite heroic veterinary efforts.  She died a few hours after the two keepers found her in the morning.  (The night keeper later resigned.)

Judeo, the zoo's alpha male chimpanzee, died after being bitten by a wild rattlesnake that had entered his enclosure. "We knew something was in there, but we didn't know what,''  Jennifer Gonsman, a keeper who witnessed the incident, told the Daily News after the chimp succumbed to the snake's venom.  "He stuck his hand in the bush and pulled it out quickly and that's when he got bit."

Your morning adorable: Young African elephants celebrate their birthdays at the Pittsburgh Zoo

Zuri, left, and Angeline are two young African elephants who celebrated their first birthdays Thursday at the Pittsburgh Zoo.  (Zuri and Angeline are half-siblings who share a father but have different mothers; Angeline was born July 9, 2008, and Zuri was born July 25, 2008. When it came to celebrating their birthdays, though, the zoo decided to split the difference and threw a combined party for both.)

Now that they're a year old (well, Zuri is technically almost a year old), the two youngsters are "eating solid foods, using their trunks to pick up objects and learning simple commands such as "come here and stop," Willie Theison, the zoo's elephant manager, told WPXI News. They've also nearly quadrupled their weight in their first year; Angeline weighed 284 pounds at birth and now weighs almost half a ton. Zuri weighed 247 pounds at birth and now weighs nearly 900.

Upon seeing these photos, we were somewhat curious about where one gets a cake fit for an elephant.  The answer, oddly, is simpler than we would have thought: Dairy Queen.  See another photo of the birthday pachyderms with Angeline's mother, Savannah, after the jump!

Elephants march in downtown L.A. to Staples Center at 4 a.m.

That sound you heard this morning was a herd of elephants stretching their legs around downtown.

At 4 a.m., 11 Asian elephants and seven horses strutted their stuff past picture-snapping police and even the acting mayor.

The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus is in town -- barely overshadowed by the Michael Jackson memorial service. The events are both at Staples Center. The circus bows Wednesday evening. Both events bring a circus-like atmosphere, although the traditional elephant parade went off without incident. Let's hope the same can be said of that other spectacle.

After the jump, more photos of the pachyderms and the horses as they paraded under freeway overpasses and up Pico Avenue.