How does Fresno Chaffee Zoo treat its elephants? Take a peek inside the operation

The Fresno Chaffee Zoo has responded to its inclusion on a list put out by the international animal protection group In Defense of Animals.

The list called out 10 North American zoos for their treatment elephants, ranking each on a series of factors like space (or lack thereof), unsuitably cold climates and unnatural conditions, reckless breeding and premature deaths among elephants.

Fresno Chafee Zoo CEO Jon Forrest Dohlin, speaking to reporters during a news conference last week, said he didn’t doubt the sincerity of the group’s intentions, but called statements in the study “distorted or just factually wrong.”

“We’re responding to the same thing,” Dohlin said: The potential that elephants have to “fire the imagination.”

“They’re inspiring our visitors, especially the youngest visitors,” he said.

That’s been true since the zoo’s first elephant, Nosey, was purchased in 1949 with donations from thousands of school children sending in pennies, nickels and dimes.

Back then, Nosey was kept on display in what was essentially a cement bowl.

These days, the zoo’s herd of African elephants — females Nolwazi and Amahle, and a bull named Vus’Musi — live in the African Adventure exhibit, a 13-acre, naturalistic safari-scape with real and artificial trees and rocks, active water features and grazing land.

The zoo’s last Asian elephant was relocated to the Los Angeles Zoo in 2017.

Attached to the African Adventure exhibit is a large building that serves as another home for the elephants and the place where zoo staff work with the animals on a daily routine to help maintain their care.

Behind the scenes with Fresno zoo elephants

The zoo invited the media, including The Bee, into the building for a behind-the-scenes look at the process, which curator Vernon Presley said is about building a level of trust with the animals.

“It is part of the social fabric of these animals,” said Presley, who came to the Chaffee Zoo in 2014 and has worked with elephants for 25 years.

“This is about stimulation and enrichment as well as care,” he added.

Even inside the high-ceiling, bar-caged room, this is a dynamic environment.

The ground is covered with piles of sand — the same sand used and approved by the U.S. Golf Association for its uniformed particles and ability to drain and dry quickly. Blue barrels hang at various lengths from ropes in the ceiling. They will be filled and used to drop food for the animals.

One side has giant doors that lead out to the safari exhibit.

The other is gated with metal bars that allow for close, but protected, contact between the elephants and the trainers.

This contact plays an important role in keeping the elephants safe and healthy, Presley said. Each day the trainers run the animals through a series of designed interactions.

The elephants respond to verbal commands from the trainers, as well a quick tweet from a whistle, that serves as a kind of reset button. Every time the elephants complete a task, they are rewarded with fruits and vegetables stores in a giant clear pouch that hangs on the trainer’s waist.

The trainer also lets them know verbally.

“Great.”

The word gets repeated often throughout the daily sessions, which run 40 minutes or so.

The trainers work to get the animals comfortable with the various medical treatments they may encounter.

There are mock blood draws (and also real ones) taken from the animals ears, which they are trained to place through a slotted hole in the fence. The elephants are also trained to run their trunks through a hole so trainers can do a trunk wash and collect mucus in a large plastic baggie for testing.

There are eye checks and vaccination shots and the swallowing of pills, which trainers help along with giant squirt bottles of Gatorade.

The goal is to have the animals react comfortably to all these processes, not only with the trainers, but also with any veterinarians and other specialists who may be called in for care.

“Animals hide it very really well when they are not feeling well,” said Dr. Shannon Nodolf, the zoo’s chief veterinary officer. Couple that with the fast-moving nature of diseases like elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus and an animal can go from presenting as totally normal to dead within a span of 24 hours, Nodolf said.

Weekly monitoring of the elephants blood and other other fluids for even minute changes can go a long way to catching sicknesses before they become life threatening. Having a series of protocols in place so the animals react accordingly, even when in distress, can be life-saving.

“We practice and practice for things we hope we will never need,” Presley said.

Elephant deaths at Fresno zoo

Of course, sometimes even best efforts aren’t enough.

Such was the case with Kara, the zoo’s Asian elephant, who died in 2017. The elephant came to the zoo from the Cristiani Bros. Circus in 1983 and had a history of joint issues that resulted in her developing of osteoarthritis. She had been receiving care and attention, but at 40 years old had a compromised quality of life.

“We had to make a very difficult decision,” Dohlin said.

The death of Betts in 2019 happened much faster.

Officials at the time said the veterinary team noticed Betts was not behaving normally on a Friday. By Saturday she was dead of endotheliotropic herpesvirus, which had been thought to only affect Asian elephants, but is now affecting all elephants, both in captivity and in the wild.

While the death was tragic, Dohlin said the information the zoo was able to gain from it helped refine the zoo’s health protocols and will be used for others animals both in captivity and in the wild.

“It’s a gut-wrenching part of the job.”

This story was originally published April 12, 2022 at 10:00 AM.