5 - online email to Edmontaon Mayor, Canada

letter posted on the website contact form of Edmonton City, in January or February 2025

Hello Mayor

I'm a member of the USA-based IDA (In Defence of Animals) an international animal protection organization.
I wish to draw your attention to your city's zoo, the coldest zoo in North America, and lonely, ageing LUCY is their only elephant.
I am sure you would be aware, as many people are, that elephants are social creatures normally living in herds of their own kind.

As the sole elephant at Edmonton Valley Zoo, Lucy should have been retired to a sanctuary YEARS AGO when she was healthy and fit. Yet she remains trapped, enduring months of solitary barn confinement during the long, frigid Canadian winters, with possible threats of violence with a bullhook, and failing health" all while the zoo steadfastly refuses to send her to a warm and spacious sanctuary she desperately needs.
For these reasons, Edmonton Valley Zoo is STILL on the 10 Worst Zoos for Elephants list this year, for an astonishing 11th time. .…It’s 3rd on this list, not a good advertisement for your city.

--->>> As Mayor, could you use your influence to tell the zoo's blinkered CEO, that this is NOT acceptable ANIMAL CARE and WELFARE.....and what is an elephant doing living in such a cold climate anyway???

* Additionally, conditions at the zoo barely meet, and in some cases breach, the minimum standards set by the Canadian Association of Zoos and Aquariums (CAZA).
CAZA requires 3 or more elephants to provide adequate social interaction, yet Lucy has lived alone since 2007.

If the zoo wants to show their public elephants, then they could organise a mini cinema at the zoo and show elephant films/DVDs and other hot climate animal films/DVDs of those animals living in their own environment, which I daresay most people would not have seen anyway.

I'm hoping that under your leadership, you can persuade, convince, pressure or coerce (whatever it takes) and get this recalcitrant CEO to their send elephant Lucy io a warmer climate sanctuary, hopefully one that also has other elephants.  So that Lucy can enjoy wandering around outside all year long until her final days on earth.  

Considering she was snatched as a 2-year-old calf from her wild home in Asia I think elephant Lucy deserves that.

Sincerely
Carola Hume
(Gold Coast, Australia)

PS. The zoo doesn't even have an email address!  Hence my writing to you.

(IDA's link -->> https://www.idausa.org/campaign/elephants/ )