An animal rights group that has been lobbying for years for the retirement of the Edmonton Valley Zoo’s resident elephant, Lucy, gathered Sunday afternoon.
Lucy’s Edmonton Advocates Project (LEAP) is calling on the City of Edmonton and the zoo to accept an offer from celebrity Cher.
The singer and actress is the co-founder of Free the Wild, an organization that aims to free animals living in captivity.
She recently sent the Valley Zoo a letter offering to send an independent elephant expert to examine Lucy’s health. But the zoo is not proceeding with the offer.
Lucy, a 44-year-old Asian elephant, has lived at Edmonton’s zoo since 1977. The zoo has long maintained that moving her to a sanctuary would worsen her condition or kill her.
Animal rights activists have been calling for Lucy to be moved for a number of years, citing the elephant’s cramped space, Edmonton’s cold weather and the fact that Lucy is alone as reasons to relocate her.
Holm says a documentary about Lucy is in the works, which she hopes changes some people’s minds about Lucy’s situation.
“I don’t doubt that Lucy’s keepers love her, we never say that they don’t, and we believe that they do the best they can. But the conditions here are just atrocious. Lucy’s barn is atrocious, the climate here is atrocious, and keeping an elephant from her own kind, an intelligent, highly social, complex animal alone is atrocious”
In the past, the zoo has maintained moving Lucy would be unethical due to the respiratory issues she suffers from and has made changes to her enclosure and routine to make her comfortable.
In 2016, Lucy’s condition was reviewed by an independent veterinarian, who concluded if the zoo chose to move her, she was “highly likely” to die en route to a sanctuary.
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