Carol Buckley spent more than 20 years performing with her elephant, Tarra, in zoos and circuses before deciding the animals deserved a different life. In 1995, she and Scott Blais founded The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee, an 800-acre preserve that is now home to seven retired circus and zoo elephants.

Carol Buckley spoke with NATURE about the sactuary:

What is the philosophy behind the sanctuary?

We employ “passive control” in managing our elephants. Passive control uses positive reinforcement, in the form of food treats, physical interaction, and verbal praise, in day-to-day elephant management. No weapon is ever used, no negative reinforcement administered. The elephants are asked only to perform behaviors necessary for medical or husbandry procedures — they are never asked to perform unnecessary tricks or behaviors. It is our experience that if elephants are not dominated and their basic needs are met — food, companionship, freedom of movement, and a sense of security — they are cooperative and nonaggressive.

You give sanctuary only to female elephants. Why?

The answer is simple. It is not natural for adult female and male Asian elephants to live together. Asian elephants are matriarchal by nature; they live in herds of related females and only very young nursing males. Young males, still dependent on their mother’s milk, remain in the matriarchal herd until they are completely weaned and exhibiting mock breeding behavior. Usually this is between 6 and 10 years of age, at which time the young male is forced to leave the herd. He quickly joins a group of other young males, but this arrangement is not permanent. Young males will change groups many times before they reach adulthood.

What is the thinking behind your no-visitors policy?

Here at the Sanctuary, we like to take our lead from the elephants themselves — which is why we are not open to the public, although computer users can take a tour on the World Wide Web, and we can arrange teleconferences for school children. When herds of unrelated wild elephants meet, they do not intermingle, nor do they touch one another.

Also, this fascination by the public to see elephants up-close and personal has resulted in disastrous consequences for captive elephants. As a direct result of the public’s desire to get closer, elephants live a miserable life: confined to small places, forced to submit to human dominance, fed only processed food due to restricted living space. Elephants deteriorate, both physically and emotionally, in an environment created to accommodate public interaction. If the only way that humans can know and enjoy the gentleness and spirituality of elephants is by interacting with them, then the species is doomed.

An elephant jam. It’s not an uncommon sight on the streets of Bangkok, Thailand, where Asian elephants are known to walk the streets, sometimes snarling traffic with their lumbering bulk. Drivers may curse and horns honk, but the elephant will not be hurried.

This week, NATURE takes a close look at The Urban Elephant, traveling from Bangkok’s crowded streets to the quiet forested hills of Tennessee to examine the close and often complicated relationships people have forged with these giant creatures. It tells the bittersweet stories of a few of the thousands of Asian elephants that live out their lives in captivity; in circuses, zoos, farms, and isolated forest logging camps.

Researchers believe that less than 40,000 endangered Asian elephants still survive in the wild, down from 1.5 million to 2 million in 1970. But there are thousands more Asian elephants living in captivity, since the animal has long been viewed as a prized captive. It is, for instance,a valued beast of burden in India and across Southeast Asia. For thousands of years, elephants have pulled plows, carried cargo, hauled lumber from forests, and ferried passengers across shallow rivers. Guided by expert elephant riders called “mahouts,” many Asians consider elephants to be the smart, rugged alternative to modern machines.

Elephants on city streets are a familiar sight in Bangkok.

But not all Asian elephants still live in their homelands. As early as 1796, resourceful traders began shipping the animals to Europe and North America, where they became celebrated curiosities. By the 19th century, Asian elephants were a staple of zoos and traveling circuses. Again, the animals’ intelligence and staying power proved prized; circus trainers, for instance, could train a young elephant to perform amazingly agile moves, knowing it might be able to occupy the spotlight for much of its 60-year life span. Some of the circus elephants featured on NATURE’s The Urban Elephant, for instance, have been performing since the late 1940s.

But some former circus trainers believe performing elephants deserve a different life. As The Urban Elephant shows, they have set up sanctuaries — such as The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee — where the one-time big-top stars can retire and live quietly alongside others of their kind.

Similarly, in Sri Lanka, conservationists are working to create better lives for that nation’s elephants. In addition to working to protect wild habitat, they have created the Pinnawala Orphanage, featured on The Urban Elephant. It was founded in 1975 to take care of the many baby elephants found orphaned in the forest after their mothers died, or who were captured or killed. It also takes in captive elephants that have been mistreated by their owners, or wild elephants that have run afoul of expanding human communities, outcast because they have trampled crops or attacked farmers.

In Canada and the United States, however, zoo officials face a different problem: a shortage of baby elephants. Because Asian elephants do not easily breed in zoos, captive populations have been dwindling.

If nothing changes, the population will be gone within 50 years, experts estimate. So, with most zoos unwilling to obtain or barred from capturing new animals from the wild, they are taking increasingly sophisticated steps to maintain their herds. At the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., for instance, researchers have successfully pioneered the use of artificial means to impregnate their female elephants. Soon, “test tube” elephants could become routine, and even help restock animals into the wild.

That day is still far off. Meanwhile, at Canada’s African Lion Safari, caretakers have had remarkable success getting their group of 11 Asian elephants, which includes 3 males, to breed without special assistance. Since 1985, the animal park has welcomed 7 baby Asian elephants. That record is especially impressive because each pregnancy lasts nearly two years, meaning that growing a herd is a slow and arduous task. But elephant program director Charlie Gray says the waiting is worth it, since the breeding program is improving our understanding of elephants. Working with researchers at the University of Guelph, for instance, African Lion Safari has helped develop tests that can pinpoint when a female elephant is ready to breed.

Understanding such intimate details may eventually help people live in harmony with the endangered Asian elephant. As NATURE’s The Urban Elephant shows, these remarkable animals long ago learned to adapt to the sometimes cruel demands of people. Now, perhaps, we can return the favor by helping these proud animals reclaim their wild heritage.

NATURE explores the unusual problems created as the struggle to give Asian elephants a home is fought worldwide.

They have a history of captivity that stretches over 200 years. They participate with humans in a surprising array of professions, including tourism, construction, and performance. And their gigantic footsteps may disappear from the face of the earth.

The enigmatic subjects of NATURE: The Urban Elephant, Asian elephants are losing territory to the inevitable process of deforestation. Industrialization all over Asia has hurt the mahouts, or elephant drivers, so that the trained elephants and their riders are being driven into major cities such as Bangkok to earn a meager living receiving donations and food from curious tourists.

Elephants forced into a captive life suffer emotionally, physically, and as a species. In “Safe Haven” one woman explains why created a santuary for retired performing elephants after giving up her own circus career.

Join The Urban Elephant’s trunk-raising salute to these talented, intelligent, and troubled creatures that we have just begun to understand.

To order a copy of The Urban Elephant, please visit the NATURE Shop.

Online content for The Urban Elephant was originally posted November 2000.