SAVE THE ELEPHANTS!

March 29, 2007

Michael Smerconish

Dulary: An empty celebration.

THERE'S an elephant in the room, and if we don't hurry up and talk about her, she'll likely end up in the Volunteer State.

We'll also lose her three friends. And when that happens, the rest of us will be left with only picture books and computer screens when trying to explain to our children what an elephant really looks like.

Her name is Dulary. These must be her final days in Philadelphia because last week I received an invite to her "Farewell Celebration" at the Philadelphia Zoo. As we've been told, this 42-year-old Asian elephant is scheduled to move to a place called the Elephant Sanctuary in rural Tennessee. (I'm picturing pedicures for pachyderms.)

Zoos across the country, after being prodded by activists and organizations like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, are shipping their elephants to sprawling sanctuaries like the one in Tennessee or the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) in California. That means more room for the elephants, but less chance for most of us to actually see one.

In Philadelphia, a lawyer and activist named Marianne Bessey has been, well, leading that charge. She's the one who invited me to Dulary's shindig. I think she's well-intentioned, but I doubt that any amount of pampering for Dulary is going to satisfy her.

"I have a problem with elephants' being taken from the wild and put in captivity," she told me last fall.

That type of concern could be expressed for any animal in the zoo and should worry all of us about the plight of the lions, tigers and bears. Give up the elephants now, and maybe someday there won't be any zoos at all.

And what a shame that would be. Because no technology that exists today or will be invented in the future can substitute for the thrill of seeing the animals, live and up close.

Bessey told me that the elephants are really suffering in zoos, where they are denied basic needs such as space and a social life with other elephants.

To prove her point, she showed me a bull hook, or ankus, that she said our zoo and others are still using for elephant management - things like moving them around or checking their feet. Bessey said they're really used "to dominate them."

The thing scared me. (I swear I saw something similar while watching a smoker back when I lived in a frat house.) So maybe our elephant keepers do need to update their treatment methods. But moving them out of town seems way too drastic.

This is the city whose do-gooders were willing to break the will of Dr. Albert Barnes to move his unique art collection to the Parkway, and to raise the scratch necessary to deny a Wal-Mart heiress "The Gross Clinic." Surely a similar effort could yield access to some Bucks or Burlington county farmland where the elephants can stretch a leg every few weeks?

DULARY IS probably a lost cause. But we've been given a reprieve with the planned relocation of the zoo's three African elephants (Petal, Kallie and Bette) to the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, where a funding shortage has blocked the expansion of that facility.

When I mentioned Dulary's "celebration" to one of my sons, he said, "It's not a zoo unless it has elephants."

He's right. We should exhaust every option before allowing the elephants to leave town. *

Listen to Michael Smerconish weekdays 5:30-9 a.m. on the Big Talker, 1210/AM. Read him Sundays in the Inquirer. Contact him via the Web at www.mastalk.com.