Lammie now spends her days alone in her enclosure without the company of another elephant. They say she has little enrichment, not much shade, insufficient water to bathe, and appears to be listless.
CHRIS DYER: ‘Lammie, the last African elephant at Johannesburg Zoo, and her mate Kinkel had been together for 17 years after he was rescued in the wild when his trunk got caught in a snare in 2000. Since he died last September, animal protection groups want to see Lammie moved to a bigger sanctuary so she does not have to spend her final years alone. The 39-year-old elephant also suffered the loss of her week-old calf, the death of her parents, the relocation of one of her brothers to a French zoo and the other being moved to a captive facility in Johannesburg. Lammie refused to eat around the time of her partner’s death, according to the zoo, and the day before Kinkel died, she was seen trying to help him get up.
Elephants develop strong social group bonds and losing family and peers can result in significant grief and trauma, animal protection groups say. Lammie now spends her days alone in her enclosure without the company of another elephant or any distractions, say campaigners. They say she has little enrichment, not much shade, insufficient water to bathe, appears to listlessly stand at the gate of her elephant house for hours on end and is overweight. Elephant experts at Humane Society International/Africa, the EMS Foundation and the Elephant Reintegration Trust are concerned for her mental well-being and are urging Johannesburg zoo in South Africa.
A rewilding sanctuary willing to offer Lammie a new home with other elephants who would become her new family has been found. But so far the zoo has resisted requests to release Lammie to the sanctuary and has instead suggested it may bring in another elephant to keep her company… South Africa’s NSPCA, an animal welfare group, appealed for an end to ‘the endless and redundant cycle of continuously condemning elephants to captivity for many years to come’… The case of Lammie, who was born in the zoo, echoes that of Happy, an Asian elephant that has lived at the Bronx Zoo in New York since 1977, including over a decade without another elephant in the same enclosure’. SOURCE…
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