City puts up $13m for elephants in the bush

Burma at Auckland Zoo. Photo / Nigel Marple

It's one of the biggest animal imports in Auckland Zoo's history, so it's not surprising that a herd of elephants will have to jump through a few logistical hoops to get to their new home.

The Auckland City Council's arts, culture and recreation committee has approved a $13 million proposal to bring in a herd of up to 10 Asian elephants, and make the elephant enclosure six times its present size.

The zoo's life science manager, Kevin Buley, said moving any elephant was a big undertaking, but the zoo needed to provide companionship for its only remaining elephant Burma after the death of Kashin last year.

The elephants would be brought in as part of a conservation bid to save the animals in the wild.

Plans are still in the early stages, but the zoo intends to use 22,000sq m of the adjacent Western Springs lakeside park for the expanded elephant enclosure.

That will include an exercise area, bull and cow areas, and a public boardwalk and viewing zone. The largest part will be a bush area.

Mr Buley said the major bonus of the new extension would be the unique access zoo visitors would have to elephants in the bush area.

"We hope to engage people with wildlife and stop them losing empathy. Asian elephants are forest elephants and we want to show them in a forest environment. They can't see each other because of the vegetation so they will start communicating with each other - it's truly unique."

The zoo is planning to bring in two elephants initially, as a start to building up to a herd of 10. They will be females, so they can be bred from once they reach maturity.

But importing elephants isn't easy.

Mr Buley said the zoo had been in discussion with an elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka to obtain animals bred in captivity.

MAF Biosecurity NZ's team manager of animal imports and exports, Dr Rachelle Linwood said all animals brought into the country needed an import health standard, which set out the requirements that must be met before "risk goods" could be imported.

Dr Linwood said a risk assessment for bringing elephants into New Zealand had already been undertaken. Before an import health standard could be written, the disease status of the country the elephants were coming from needed to be known.

"We look at it from a biosecurity perspective - we're purely concerned about disease and pests such as foot and mouth disease and ticks."

Whether the elephants were quarantined depended on where they came from. If it was a foot and mouth disease country, they would spend time quarantined in a third country.

Mr Buley said the zoo was discussing with Niue the possibility of quarantining the animals there.

The Pacific island nation has served as a third country quarantine area for alpacas.

That would mean two separate chartered flights for the elephants.

Zoo staff would be sent to the Sri Lankan orphanage and the quarantine station to develop a relationship with the elephants and minimise the effect of transition.

That effect will also be carefully considered in terms of food.

"They're not particularly fussy eaters but they eat a lot," Mr Buley said.

An adult elephant eats about 150kg of food a day, including hay, palm, banana plant, fruit and vegetables.

In Sri Lanka the staple diet for captive elephants is palm trunk and fronds, and those will be obtained in New Zealand so there is no sudden change in diet.

The chairman of the zoo board, city councillor Graeme Mulholland, said planning was still in the early stages.

A change to the Auckland City District Plan to extend the zoo's existing concept plan into Western Springs Park has been proposed.