Elephant rides banned at accredited zoos in Canada

Tourists ride an elephant at a wildlife sanctuary in India on Friday, Oct. 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Vancouver — The certification body for zoos in Canada has banned elephant rides at all of its accredited facilities, a decision animal welfare advocates say is long overdue.

"I think it's a good decision. It's a no brainer, it should have happened long before," animal welfare advocate Melissa Matlow, campaign director for World Animal Protection, told CTVNews.ca over the phone on Friday.

Jim Facette, CEO of Canada's Accredited Zoos and Aquariums (CAZA), told CTVNews.ca the new policy was put in place to bring CAZA's regulations and policies in line with that of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA), the organization for zoo accreditation bodies worldwide.

"Recently our world body came out with some policy changes," Facette said Friday during a phone call. "Our board asked our [accreditation commission] to conduct a review that would ensure that we are consistent with WAZA policy and standards, be it elephant rides and anything else."

Matlow says elephant rides are something outside of the elephants' natural activity and cause a great deal of hardship for the animals.

"Elephants are wild animals, even if they're in captivity. They haven't been domesticated. So, they still have their natural behaviours and fears," she said. "In order to allow a person on them for a ride, they have to be harshly trained to fear people and to obey those commands."

"It's so archaic and it just doesn't belong in a professional zoo."

Elephant rides had already been banned at zoos accredited by the U.S.-based Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), which counts six Canadian zoos among its membership.

The African Lion Safari in Ontario had been the last CAZA-accredited zoo in Canada to offer elephant rides, but voluntarily stopped offering rides in 2019, after a trainer was attacked by an elephant and suffered non-life-threatening injuries. Facette said the trainer returned to work after recovering and "is doing just fine."

When asked about why CAZA didn't ban elephant rides in 2011 when the AZA did so, or in 2019 after the African Lion Safari incident, Facette responded by saying there were no incidents related to elephant rides at its zoos between 2011 and 2019, and that no zoos had offered rides after 2019.

"It's not for me to look backwards about why this happened, why it didn't happen at one time versus another time," Facette said.

"It's not for CAZA to dictate to another country what they should or shouldn't be doing, or vice versa. We do on a regular basis, examine what's been done elsewhere in the world and look at if this is something that we need to do here in Canada, given the circumstance in which we have here in Canada," he continued.

Matlow still wants to see the provincial government in Ontario enact legislation to ban elephant rides and other forms of wildlife entertainment, such as tiger selfies.

"There are other forms of wildlife entertainment where animals are forced to do unnatural things to entertain people, and I think they're all wrong, and they all should be prohibited in the necessary legislation," she said.