Tinkerbelle, from San Francisco Zoo, dies at PAWS sanctuary

We had sad news from San Francisco this weekend. One of the elephants recently released from the San Francisco Zoo to the PAWS sanctuary has died. The heading on the front page of the Saturday March 26 San Francisco Chronicle read, "Ailing Tinkerbelle is put to death;
Foot woes too much for popular elephant."

Tinkerbelle was euthanized after collapsing on Thursday. Pat Derby of PAWS is quoted: "We've all known that her condition was what I guess you'd call terminal. I had hoped that she'd have a year or two."

We read:
"Derby called in veterinarians from around the country. They all said the same thing: Tinkerbelle's feet were not fixable. Too many years of concrete had taken their toll."

On Thursday, after Tinkerbelle collapsed then managed to stand, "Derby called the sanctuary's vet. Tinkerbelle headed toward an open gate before falling again. The vet saw that the pads cushioning her feet had slipped off, exposing the bone.

"The elephant didn't seem stressed and didn't fight to get up, said Derby, who added that she no longer could have stood on her feet."

We read that the before Tinkerbelle died had been "one of her best":

"'She was trumpeting in the bath, playing with her toys and eating like a little pig,' Derby said."

On the larger issue, the battle to have elephants removed from zoos, we read that Tinkerbelle's "relocation climaxed almost nine months of bile-filled debate over whether she and Lulu, an African elephant, should remain at the San Francisco Zoo, move to another zoo or go to a sanctuary. The uproar resulted from the deaths of two other elephants -- Calle and Maybelle -- last spring. In time, the controversy attracted national attention and eventually involved animal rights activists, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA), which threatened to remove the zoo's accreditation for defying its recommendation to ship the two pachyderms to another zoo instead of the sanctuary."

You can read the whole article on line at: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/03/26/ELEPHANT.TMP
It provides an opportunity for letters to the editor against keeping wild animals captive for human entertainment. A great resource on the issue is http://www.SaveWildElephants.com

The Chronicle takes letters: letters [at] sfchronicle.com and advises: "Please limit your letters to 200 or fewer words ... shorter letters have a better chance of being selected for publication."


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