WICHITA, Kansas – Elderly elephants have the Sedgwick County Zoo improving the safety of their exhibit. Zoo keepers worry their two past-their-prime pachyderms could hurt themselves as they advance in years.
Stephanie and Cinda have been living at the zoon since 1972 and they’re getting up in years. Both are around 40 years old. The average lifespan of an elephant is 33, but elephants in captivity have been known to live into their 60’s.
“They're not senior citizens yet, but we want to make sure to take care of them,” said Mark Reed, Sedgwick County Zoo executive director.
The current exhibit has a moat preventing the elephants from contact with the public, but they’d often stretch across the moat for tasty leaves on the other side. Zoo keepers worry it’s an accident waiting to happen, so they’re filling in the moat and installing an eight-foot fence.
“We'll all get used to it,” Reed said. “It won’t be quite as nice as I think this is.”
A new elephant exhibit is in the planning stages, but the lackluster economy has put those plans on hold.
When the new elephant exhibit is finally built it will be the most expensive in the zoo's history. They don't have a price tag on it right now, but they expect it to exceed the $6.5 million spent on the gorilla exhibit.
“This town's hurting in several places,” Reed said. ”Tremendous amount of people laid off. We'd like to see the workforce going in the other direction before we start.”
The new multi-million dollar exhibit will be the only one in the world allowing visitors to walk through the center of it. But until the state-of-the-art exhibit is built, Stephanie and Cinda’s current home won’t be as nice. It will, however, be much safer for them.
Zoo officials hope to announce later this year when they’ll start construction on the new elephant exhibit.
