Letters to the Editor: Elephants don’t belong in zoos. Here’s how sanctuaries should house them

To the editor: What a thoughtful piece by editorial board member Carla Hall about elephants, who like all animals in zoos, “don’t have to avoid predators or hunt their next meal, but they pay for that with a life in captivity.”

Those of us who live with dogs and cats realize that their emotions are much like ours, and science is finally acknowledging that the same goes for other intelligent beings. We can therefore probably extrapolate from human suffering in jails, where people get food and shelter but are deprived of freedom, to the suffering of other species in captivity.

Zoos forfeit the emotional welfare of individual animals in order to display them and breed them, both for human enjoyment and with the hope that our pleasure will lead to concern and care for the species on display. Most sanctuaries don’t allow visitors at all. What we need is balance.

We need places where members of other species can live in safety, with space and autonomy, without forced breeding, and without the separation of parents from their offspring. But there’s no good reason that humans should not be allowed to visit and observe the animals who live in those places, on carts that cross the hundreds of acres they inhabit, in exchange for funding their welfare.

In our treatment of other species, just like with our own, it is time for some common-sense balance that can lead to a winning outcome for all.

Karen Dawn, Santa Barbara

The writer is founder and president of DawnWatch, an animal advocacy nonprofit.