TULSA, Okla. — There are fewer than 50,000 Asian Elephants remaining in the wild, and local experts are encouraging people to do their part to keep that number from dwindling.
2 News walked with staff through the new Elephant Preserve Barn to get an exclusive look at the zoo’s two new Asian Elephants: Hank and Connie.
The preserve barn looks like a giant enclosure with towering metal fixtures; however, it serves as a space with natural substrate flooring and dedicated areas to keep the zoo’s five Asian Elephants thriving and comfortable.
“We have our bath stalls here,” Jessica Scallan, Zoological Manager of Elephants, said. “You can see it is quite open and vast. This is our great new space that the Tulsa Zoo just built."
It’s also quite possibly the largest shower you'll ever see. However, it is used for more than bathing.
“The elephants are quite intelligent,” Scallan said. “They know various behaviors. When you put all those little behaviors together, so to present their feet, to lean in their body, to do a mouth check. You can do more advanced behaviors when you add them all together."
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Zoo staff uses these techniques to draw blood, get radiographs, and so much more.
“With the power of reinforcement, which in our case is lots of treats, they participate in their health care,” Scallan said.
August is Asian Elephant Awareness month and Connie and Hank serve as the Zoo’s ambassadors. Connie is 52 years old and weighs 7,400 pounds, while Hank is a spritely 36-year-old who weighs a whopping 16,000 pounds.
Connie and Hank go through these routines daily, something crucial to their survival at the Tulsa Zoo, which sparks a bigger conversation about their species in general.
“They need your help,” Scallan said. “Asian Elephants are endangered and there's only about 50,000 left in the world today, and there's lots of pressure that Asian elephants get."
The two major pressures are habitat loss and human - elephant conflict.
“Here at the Tulsa Zoo, we are asking people to take action and they can help us out in two ways,” Scallan said.
- Head to social media and hashtag Asian Elephant Awareness Month with a picture or video
“They are a keystone species,” Scallan said. “They are vital to their habitat, and they provide an opportunity for other plants and animals to thrive.”
- Be a good consumer and be aware of palm oil.
Large areas with high conservation values are cleared to make room for vast palm plantations, destroying habitats for our endangered friends.
How can you be on the lookout?
“You can pretty easy take your phone or your iPad and download the palm oil app,” Scallan said.
With the app you can scan products at the grocery store and learn whether a product is made from sustainable palm oil or not. The small effort could keep plantations from destroying the land inhabited by not only Asian Elephants, but other animals, too.
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