A Pair of Wistful Farewells

Goodbye Iringa, Toka and Thika. It looks like the three surviving elephants of the Toronto Zoo are finally going to be leaving us. A challenging journey to California awaits them, sometime before the end of this month.

Goodbye elephants! You’ll be missed.

The move follows a protracted and often farcical tussle that has lasted years. I hope that the elephants don’t suffer during the trip. Regardless of how you felt about their captivity here, they were amazing and majestic to witness in person, and I thank them for their service.

Goodbye OLF
The other farewell I want to make is to the Ontario Longboarding Forum, a.k.a. OLF, which shut down about a month and a half ago.

OLF was an online bulletin board forum for skateboarders. It was a key hub for the community and an important gathering place for skaters of all ages and backgrounds.

The classic OLF banner with its square-jawed Aryan skaters

My half-hearted description fails to do it justice, unfortunately. At a different time I might have written a lengthy panegyric, but I haven’t the energy. With the rise of Facebook and other social networks, as well as my own declining skating, I have to admit I drifted away over the past couple of years.

Founder Chris Barrett’s notice about the Ontario Longboarding Forum’s demise

Nevertheless OLF was an influential piece of the Toronto skate scene for almost a decade, and I’m happy that I got to participate however peripherally as the site waxed — and waned — in popularity.

I made a lot of friends on OLF. I’m grateful to Chris Barrett and his conspirators for running and administering the site over all these years. Thanks Chris, Adam, Bill, and the other mods. You guys were great, and I salute your efforts and passion. Be proud of your contribution.

There’s a brief history of the origins of OLF in Michael Brooke’s examination of the Toronto longboarding scene, Half the Hills All the Skills; the entire article is well worth reading.

Meanwhile the scene has moved on. More and more people are skating, and OLF’s time came and went. Like the sand patterns in a Zen garden, perhaps OLF’s existence was meant to be ephemeral—no trace of it remains except in our shared memories.

See previously
No more elephants at the Toronto Zoo
City Council Votes to Send Elephants Away

Past Skate Articles From Me
• The Return of Longboard Haven Skate Shop
• Profile: Justin Readings, Downhill Skateboarder
• Is skateboarding illegal in Toronto?
• The Toronto Board Meeting: A Short History
• The rise of Patrick Switzer, Downhill Skateboarder
• Letter to Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon: Why Jeopardize the Ashbridges Bay Skate Park?
• Concrete Wave’s Lame ‘Pin-Up’ Cover
• The Banana Split -- Four Years Later
• Grappling with another longboarding death
• Our first longboarding tragedy
• Speed! Thrills! Women! FUBU Skate Race Recap

Too many deaths at the Toronto Zoo?

A Sumatran Tiger
photo via: Wikipedia

It sure seems like there are have been a lot of animal deaths at the Toronto Zoo lately.

A few days ago Brytne, a 13 year old Sumatran tiger, was mauled to death by a breeding partner, in an incident that zoo handlers were careful to stress as ‘really bad luck’.

Look at this list of recent animal deaths at the Zoo, compiled by the Toronto Star:

• October 2011: 10-year-old polar bear Aurora gave birth to three cubs and “rejected” them. Two died. (She killed two previous cubs the prior year as well)
• Oct. 21, 2011: Rowdy, the zoo’s oldest male African lion, was euthanized, just a few months after his mate, Nokanda, died of cancer. The lions had been companions since Nokanda moved to the zoo from Philadelphia in 1997. 
• July 2011: 15-year-old Nokanda, a white lioness, was euthanized after vets discovered she had cancer.
• February 2010: Tongua, a Siberian tiger, died after surgery. The 17-year-old animal did not recover from sedation.
• August 2010: Samantha, a 37-year-old Western Lowland gorilla was euthanized after a stroke caused her to lose control of her limbs and experience seizures.
• June 2010: 32-year-old orangutan Molek was euthanized after blood tests revealed his kidneys had stopped working.

Plus, there are all the elephant deaths -- four in four years. We had a herd; attrition reduced this to a lonely troika, providing the impetus for city council’s contentious vote to finally move the pachyderms to a wildlife sanctuary.

What is a normal animal mortality rate for zoos?
Deaths are inevitable when you manage a sizable population of wild animals. Animals get older. They interact. Accidents, illness, and injuries occur. The looming question is, what’s ‘normal’? What are the comparative metrics for zoo animal mortality rates? Is the Toronto Zoo doing better, or worse than we should expect, for a facility of its size and population?

[A cynical person might comment that the mortality rate for every zoo is always 100%]

I wonder if this is, in a certain sense, a foreboding turning point for the Zoo -- when key members of its animal stock have disappeared. Its management, ongoing existence and funding are openly being questioned. There have been numerous controversial discussions about selling or leasing it to a third party for operation.

Is a municipally-operated zoo no longer part of our shared future vision for this city?

I think that zoos are an important mechanism for urbanites to stay connected to nature. Does the educational value of the zoo outweigh the potential loss of that connection? Whenever I visit the zoo, I am filled with a sense of wonder at the myriad forms of life on this planet. Yet zoos are inherently artificial creations -- an imposition of structure on natural life.

I’d love to hear what you think in the comments.

See also
Council votes to send elephants away
No more elephants at the Toronto Zoo

City Council Votes to Send Elephants Away

Following on the heels of an earlier Zoo Board decision to shut down the elephant exhibit at the Toronto Zoo, Toronto’s City Council voted last night 31-4 to move the three remaining elephants to the PAWS Sanctuary in California (rather than another zoo).

Will you remember us?

Following the original Zoo Board decision, it was thought that the process of moving the magnificent beasts might take as long as a few years, but evidently it has been deemed a priority.

As I’ve previously written, I support this decision reluctantly.

Seeing wild animals directly, in the flesh, is a captivating, pleasurable, informative experience that pulls us out of our narrow urban awareness. It has the potential to awake our wonder at the natural world.

At the same time it’s almost certainly a positive decision for the future health of the elephants, as they will be moved to a location with a better climate and infrastructure. It was evident that the animals were suffering here (a consideration that has historically not always been viewed as important).

The loss of the elephants also raises broader questions regarding the future of the Zoo in Toronto. The elephants were a signature exhibition at the facility and always immensely popular, for obvious reasons. Do zoos still have a place in a modern world? Has their mission of conservancy and education been made obsolete?

Given our Zoo’s recent past of troubling management and fundraising issues, will this prove to be the first step towards the eventual shutting down or selling off the entire zoo? (Council has already voted to explore searching for third parties that might “purchase, lease or operate” the zoo.)

We shall see in years to come.

Goodbye Thika, Toka and Iringa! Thank you for your time with us. We’ll miss you.


Further reading
No More Elephants at the Toronto Zoo
What the Elephants Know (Toronto Life)

Update
Apparently the decision to select PAWS hasn’t been received well by the current zookeepers: Toronto Star-- Zoo Keepers Fuming over Vote
Dec: The issue still hasn’t been resolved: Councillors Blast Zoo over Elephant Move
April 2012: Toronto Zoo loses its accreditation over this decision
May 2012: Elephants here to stay for now
Oct 2012: Council could make a new elephant decision in next month
Nov 2012: Toronto Council votes to send elephants to California -- again
Jan 2013: Elephant Tug of War: The Story of the Toronto Zoo transfer

No more elephants at the Toronto Zoo

After a lengthy debate, the Toronto Zoo board has voted to shut down the zoo's elephant exhibit.

I have mixed feelings about the decision. The kid in me says, 'This sucks!', but every time I have gone to the zoo and seen that exhibit, my conscience has nagged at me -- the elephant space has always struck me as being far too small for such massive creatures. It seemed obvious that we were keeping them in an enclosure that was inappropriate and likely debilitating.

Will we forget the elephants? Will they forget us?

I'm torn, because viewing these magnificent creatures in the flesh is immensely valuable for broadening the experience of stay-at-home urbanites like myself -- it is a profound reminder of the wider, greater natural world that exists beyond the artificiality of our cities. Without exposure to these wild animals we risk losing an appreciation for our place in the ecosystem, and becoming distanced from nature and the environment.

There was mounting evidence that the elephant exhibit, in its present form, was unsustainable and harmful. There are only three elephants left -- our 'herd' isn't large enough to be called such anymore -- and in the last five years, four elephants have died. Pretty damning numbers.The elephants have also shown signs of psychological distress and aberrant behaviours.

Does the welfare of the elephants outweigh the educational value of their presence? In our western culture, zoos were initially influenced and inspired by the pervasive idea of man's 'dominion [...] over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.' (Gen. 1-26). Man's role in this Christian perspective is to subdue nature, not submit to it. Animals are our subjects, not our peers. Zoos were created for our entertainment and titillation. The health of the animals was never a concern, except as an operational issue. Over time, concerns about animal welfare and growing ecological awareness has shifted the emphasis of zoos towards conservancy and education, but the essential tension remains -- is it ethically acceptable to take an animal from its natural place, and exhibit it for our pleasure and edification?

In the end, I have to reluctantly support the decision as being the best thing. The elephants -- and I'd argue some of the larger primates as well -- fall into that grey area where sufficient intelligence is present such that suffering is a result of our keeping them captive. They are 'conscious' of their surroundings and seem resigned to their fate. It is our responsibility to mitigate that suffering as best we can and not exacerbate their condition.

There is still plenty of time to see the pachyderms at the zoo -- determining the ultimate destination for the elephants is expected to take up to a couple of years. It's a sad decision for the zoo, but one that reflects the gradual change in our philosophical outlook on animals.

UPDATE -- October 26, 2011 
City Council Votes to Send Elephants Away

Update 2—October 17, 2013 (!)
A Pair of Wistful Farewells