She was at the zoo in the same exhibit, that concrete pit, for all those years. That space was just dark, cold, damp, miserable, completely devoid of any stimulation. She was in there for five decades.
PANDORA DEWAN: An elephant who was held inside an Argentinean zoo’s concrete pit for almost her entire life has died less than six months after being rescued and transferred to a Brazilian sanctuary.
Pocha was taken to Elephant Sanctuary Brazil with her daughter, Guillermina, who was observed mourning her mother shortly after her death. The former zoo elephant’s cause of death is not known, but sanctuary staff suspect it could have been related to a so far unidentified chronic illness she may have developed during her many years in captivity.
“She was perfect,” Scott Blais, co-founder and CEO of Global Sanctuary for Elephants, a charitable organization, told Newsweek. “She was one of those elephants that stole my heart from the get-go…. She saw well into your soul when she looked at you.”
Pocha and Guillermina came to the sanctuary in May 2022 after decades spent in captivity at the Ecoparque of Mendoza, formerly the Mendoza Zoological Park, in Argentina. Pocha is thought to have arrived at the zoo in 1968.
“She was at the zoo in the same exhibit, that concrete pit, for all those years,” Blais said. “That space was just dark, cold, damp, miserable, completely devoid of any stimulation…. She was in there for five decades.”
He continued: “They do a really good job of hiding their trauma. They have a way of compartmentalizing that suffering. They find a way to tolerate it…and they come out with such a resounding resilience.”
After they arrived at the sanctuary, Pocha, 57, and her daughter 24, quickly adapted to their new surroundings. “She immediately immersed herself into this world of walking and grazing and dusting and playing,” Blais said…
Whether Pocha’s time in the zoo was responsible for her death is not known. “Based on the necropsy, there’s information of a problem that was chronic, but we don’t know the origin of the problem at this point. We have to wait for the pathologist,” said Blais, adding that he believes the illness may have manifested during her time at Mendoza zoo.
“We know that the illnesses these elephants have can sometimes be decades old,” he continued. “We see a lot of captive elephants with digestive issues, stomach ulcers, osteoarthritis, infections, a lot of issues with colic…and all of this goes back to the compromise of captivity. SOURCE…
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