Last year the Zimbabwe government sold 24 wild baby elephants to China. To capture the babies, helicopters were used to stampede an elephant herd; the babies who could not keep up were brought down, chained and forced into cages – babies so tiny, they were still breastfeeding.
Several months later, those babies who survived were drugged and flown halfway across the world to China where they will be trained to perform circus tricks in a zoo. You can see what the zoo has in mind for the babies in the pictures shown below of young Asian elephants at one of the company’s zoos.
Worse still, the zoo where the babies will be imprisoned hasn’t yet been built, so they are locked up in a quarantine facility in cages too small for a single elephant, let alone 24. Above, you can see two photos of the elephants struggling in these cages. There the babies will stay for a minimum of two years until the zoo is ready. One baby has already died, all the others are in poor condition and most are unlikely to survive.
Network for Animals is trying to achieve better living conditions for the babies and the introduction of a law banning the import of any more baby elephants from Africa to China. Please, respectfully, sign our petition today, asking the Chinese government to take action to prevent further suffering.
