Open Letter to Tom LaBonge
Dear Council Member LaBonge,How many more elephants must die at the LA City Zoo before we realize that keeping elephants at the zoo is not right?
Elephants need more room than we can possibly give them at the Zoo. Its as simple as that. Its time to send the remaining elephants to preserves where they will have room to walk around, the proper care and other elephants to socialize with.
People are saying you are the main reason our City is going forward with an unnecessary and unworkable $40 million elephant pen. The Mayor opposes it as probably many of your colleagues do, but, they won't cross you.
Zoos are fast becoming a thing of the past. With technology, children and others can learn about animals without putting them in cages and artificial environments. There are plans for this right now.
Indeed, for about 1/4th the cost of your animal pen, Walt Disney Imagineering - just across the LA River from the Zoo - could build a virtual exhibit with realistic animatronic elephants and virtual reality webcam views from elephants in preserves and in the wild. We'd save millions of dollars and the elephants would be in a happier environment.
Will you think about it? The elephants are waiting.
Posted by Mayor Sam @ 6/15/2006 12:05:00 AM
14 Comments:
Better yet, could we have Disney replace City Council with pneumatic replicas? I mean, they've already got Abe Lincoln....
Get a grip, people go to zoos to see animals, not webcams!! If the LA Zoo was just like the San Diego Zoo, you probably wouldn't be complaining.
Go join PETA and protest in front of the Mayor's house !!
C'mon MS, closing the zoo is an extreme position. Our children are already deprived of much of what we had a kids. There is some value in observing and interacting with and smelling live animals.
The mayor would enthuisiastically support this issue if with zeal if the elephants in question were illegal aliens from Mexico
Nobody is asking to close the zoo. Just the elephant exhibit. It's time for them to go off to sanctuaries.
Our children are deprived? Oh please. Pick me up off the floor. I'm hysterical... They aren't deprived of jack shit.
No smart kid chooses elephants who will MORE THAN LIKELY die sooner, so that the children have the chance to see them live without driving further away. Unless they've been raised by ignorant, non-caring, selfish individuals like yourself.
Stop making this political and just think of the elephants and nobody has to be in PETA to agree with this. You don't even have to be part of the Ferdin/Vlasak terrorist group. They aren't worrying about the elephants. It's not on their agenda The elephants need more space.
Please Lloyd Levine - get that bill finished. City Council won't listen to the majority of the people of the City of Los Angeles. Instead they 're letting LaBonge make the call. The bad, bad call....
You can still see every other animal there.
And to 10:33 and 11:06 - I dare you to take your children to the zoo to view elephants. Ha! Good luck with that one. You won't find them. They're rarely on display.
Send them to a sanctuary. No kid ever died from not seeing an elephant. A couple of elephants have died early so snot nosed brats could look at them before moving on to something else with their short attention spans.
How can a City be so stupid about something??
Lloyd Levine's bill on elephant exhibits was bottled up in committee up in Sacramento a few weeks ago. It's not going to be the "cavalry riding to the rescue" on this issue.
Why just the elephants? What about other animals that roam long distances in the wild? The lions, tigers, bears, migratory birds, Monarch butterflies, all would be removed from zoos under this 'logic'.
Bulldoze the entire zoo and put up a large screen TV playing Animal Planet 24/7.
There is a point to the last comment. I was only dealing with the elephants here right now because of the $40 million we're ready to squander. But I think a number of other animals could be handled the same way. I'd leave it up to the experts, perhaps some small animals could live at the zoo, but the rest of it could be virtual.
And if you want to smell animals, I am sure those boys and girls at WDI could come up with a technology for that.
It's troubling that people seem to think sending elephants to a sanctuary is the ultimate answer. For example, the Paws sanctuary in Northern California does not have full time staff or veterinarians to work with the elephants. Sactuaries are only regulated by USDA while zoos are regulated by USDA,their governing agencies or boards and the AZA which has very stringent standards for elephant care. And the fallacy that elephants love wandering miles and miles each day is balony. Elephants will only walk as far as it takes to get food so the fantasy that the elephants in sanctuaries are wandering miles and miles everyday on their own are false.
The new "issue of the week" is the state of the elephant's feet at the LA Zoo. The LAT recently did a feature on how the Hollywood gang has moved on from the AIDS crisis. I guess Magic J. walking around making millions has them disillusioned. I love animals but I can't get into this issue. But spending 40 mil is a lot of dough.
9:22
Because other animals don't die if they DON'T get to roam far distances.
11:04
Could you direct me to some proof that elephants only roam until they find a food source? I've searched for this information and can't find it anywhere. Not if they roam long distances OR that they only roam until they find food.
Walter - for another 10% Disney can supply a pneumatic mayor, and pay back the investment with the savings in travel junkets in a couple of years.
You are asking Labonge to "...think about it".
The operative word here is "think".
Labonge, think?
YOU think about THAT.
No shit. The good Lord knows I voted for him on an old Mayor Sam poll for the dumbest councilmember.
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