Time to shut down zoos

It is often said that when elephants sense the end of their lives approaching, they quietly leave the herd to die alone in dignity, compassion and peace.

- BY NADEEM KHALID

But for Noor Jehan and, later, Sonia, the wild African elephants captured from Tanzania as calves in 2009, no such end was granted. They died in captivity behind iron bars, suffering from disease and isolation, far away from the ecosystems that gave them meaning.

At Karachi Zoo, dozens of wildlife and animal rights volunteers kept round-the-clock vigil around the ailing Noor Jehan, offering her medicines and food, tending to her sores and helping her change sides with the help of a crane. When she succumbed to illness, grief swept across her caretakers.

Sonia followed soon after, dying at the young age of 18 of tuberculosis, a condition rarely seen in wild elephants and often linked to stress in captivity. Her memorial reads: "Bound behind bars, her spirit sought freedom — let flowers bloom where she once walked this Earth."

Witnesses to her final days recall a deeply moving scene: one of her surviving two sisters, overcome with grief, striking a lonely tamarind tree with visible rage and sorrow, only to be gently embraced by the other in a heartbreaking moment of solidarity. The display of emotional intelligence and memory reaffirmed that elephants are deeply social and sentient beings. Captivity breaks not just their bodies, but their spirits too.

A MORAL BLIGHT

The death of these elephants is not just a tragedy, but a stark symbol of the growing ethical and ecological concerns surrounding zoos in the modern era. The deaths are the latest in a series of elephant fatalities in Pakistani zoos since 2012, pointing to a broader crisis in captive wildlife management.

In the wild, elephants roam 20 to 25 kilometres a day, foraging, socialising and exercising their cognitive faculties. In contrast, zoo enclosures restrict their movement to a few hundred metres, leading to obesity, joint disorders and the development of stereotypic behaviours, such as repetitive pacing and head-bobbing, which are signs of extreme distress.