Brooklyn Council Member Shahana Hanif has introduced a bill that would effectively force the Bronx Zoo to relinquish custody of New York City’s two elephants, Happy and Patty.
“No other City has passed legislation to ban elephant captivity, and I’m proud New York City will be the first,” Hanif, the co-chair of the Council’s Progressive Caucus, said in a statement.
Director of government operations for the Nonhuman Rights Project Courtney Fern said that Hanif’s bill would bring relief to animals who “are known to suffer greatly in captivity when they’re deprived of their freedom. If passed, would be the first elephant captivity ban in the U.S.— And I think it’s an important step to helping end elephant suffering.”
A spokesperson for the Zoo declined to comment ahead of Hanif formally introducing her bill on Thursday.
Hanif’s bill would require elephants in NYC to have a habitat of 15 acres at a minimum. Happy and Patty, both 50-something female Asian Elephants, reportedly only an acre to work with at the Bronx Zoo. The two live separately and have done so ever since after Happy’s Grumpy died in 2002; Grumpy’s death was reportedly from being attacked by Patty and another elephant.
Happy, who was born in the early 1970s, probably in Thailand, was captured and brought to a Florida petting zoo with six other elephants, each named for one of the dwarves in Snow White. The Bronx Zoo acquired her and Grumpy in 1977 to train them to perform tricks in costume. The zoo said in 2006 that once the elephants die, the exhibit will close.
Hanif wrote the bill in collaboration with the Nonhuman Rights Project, a Florida-based animal advocacy organization that pursued a legal case in New York that argued that Happy was being illegally detained at the Bronx Zoo. The New York Court of Appeals found in a 5-2 decision that Happy lacked habeas corpus and thus was not entitled to the same bodily freedom as humans.
Hanif’s bill has co-sponsors at the ready, but Council Member Oswald Feliz, whose district includes The Bronx Zoo, and Council Member Althea Stevens, whose district borders it, have not spoken on the bill. Hanif’s spokesperson Michael Whitesides said, “We’re still in conversation with Bronx electeds and hope to have them sign on soon.”
However, the Wildlife Conservation Society, which is in charge of the Bronx Zoo, said the legislation is “full of general, boilerplate language regarding elephants, references issues that are not relevant and does not consider our two elephants as individuals with distinct personalities.”
It also accused the Nonhuman Rights Project of working alongside Hanif to “advance an anti-zoo agenda.”
The bill would also ban riding on elephants or forcing them to work or perform. It would also separate male and female elephants and prohibit any breeding. More uniquely, it would stipulate that elephants have access to physical and emotional stimuli. Of that provision, Hanif said it, “will ensure the complex social-emotional needs of elephants are met and if they can’t be, then this bill requires elephants to be released to a sanctuary.”
The bill does not define the term “sanctuary” but there are at least two in the United States that likely fit the description, with one in Tennessee and another in Northern California.
