From a viewing platform in the Toronto Zoo’s African Savanna, a mother and child are watching Iringa, Thika and Toka trudge around in the cold.

“Mommy,” the little one says, “why do the elephants have chains on their feet?”

“Because they’re going to be leaving soon.”

The chain bracelets, clasped around their thick, wrinkly ankles, are part of training for the big move south. The elephants have been wearing them daily since last January.

“When are they leaving?” the child wants to know.

Good luck trying to answer that one. A better question: Why has this gone on for so long?

A turbulent 15 months have passed since city council first voted to send the Toronto Zoo’s aging elephants to the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS), which runs a California animal sanctuary that takes in retired zoo and circus elephants.

And still, the ladies remain in limbo, shuffling around the same small paddock they called home long before the debate about their future erupted in outrage, name-calling and wild accusations; before the elephants needed lawyers and their own PR team; before we all ran out of puns about trunk packing; before Bob Barker came on down.

The bizarre saga is not just about the Toronto trio.

Iringa, Thika and Toka are part of a larger battle that has been waged in cities across North America over the past decade, as elephants have taken centre stage in what many are calling a zoo identity crisis.

In the face of escalating criticism about animal welfare, the zoo industry has waged a campaign to lead the public to believe elephants thrive in zoos, when mounting evidence points to the contrary.

Many elephant experts believe sanctuaries — with their wide open spaces and natural habitats that closely mimic the wild — provide a far better standard of care for pachyderms. The zoo industry does not accept this.

“North American zoos are in a state of denial about keeping elephants,” says Dr. Benjamin Beck, a former director at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., and an expert in the management and psychological welfare of zoo animals. “They are so convinced that they can keep elephants effectively that they’re simply, I think, denying the facts.”

With city council’s decision to send the elephants to PAWS now reaffirmed, the Toronto Zoo is working toward a spring departure deadline. But behind the scenes, there is evidence some elephant handlers and zoo supporters are still debating ways to thwart the process, and whispers that others have no intention of co-operating with a plan they fundamentally disagree with. Will Toronto’s elephant saga ever end?

The answer lies in a more complicated question: How did it come to this?

On a cold November morning in 2009, Toronto zookeepers found Tara, the 41-year-old matriarch of the all-female pachyderm group, lying on her side in the elephant house, unable to get up. It can be dangerous for elephants to lie this way for long periods because it puts pressure on their internal organs. Despite attempts by staff to right Tara, she died. An autopsy was inconclusive, but her death — the zoo’s fourth elephant fatality in four years — set off a firestorm of criticism from animal rights groups.

The zoo was left with only three aging elephants — the minimum number recommended for the highly social creatures under zoo industry standards — and a game-changing dilemma. Management would have to decide whether to invest tens of millions of dollars into expanding the elephant exhibit, or find a new home for Iringa, Thika and Toka.

Since the early days of the animals-on-display business, when the prospect of a zoo without an elephant was unimaginable, a majority of the world’s leading pachyderm experts and a growing number of industry professionals have come to believe most zoos do not meet the biological needs of elephants, particularly in colder climates where they are forced to remain in small, indoor spaces for weeks at a time.

As information from long-term studies has come in over the past decade, scientists have learned pachyderms are highly-intelligent, emotional creatures that need a great deal of stimulation to prevent boredom. They are meant to forage and roam in large herds, forming social bonds with other elephants of their choosing. Captive elephants suffer from a number of common maladies, including foot disease and arthritis from walking on hard surfaces, herpes, tuberculosis and mental distress.

The problem is that elephants are a big draw for zoos, a long-time status symbol and the key figures in an ideological battle with some animal rights groups that are against keeping animals in captivity.

Many experts believe the zoo industry — led by the powerful Association of Zoos and Aquariums, a U.S.-based trade organization that sets standards for its members — operates on the fear that elephants represent a line in the sand, which, if crossed, could open the door to losing other animals and ultimately lead to the demise of zoos.

“If zoos refuse to recognize that they cannot adequately meet the needs of elephants in the small spaces that zoos provide, I think they’re going to open themselves up to much more severe criticism in the future,” says David Hancocks, a world-renowned former zoo director and co-editor of An Elephant in the Room: The Science and Well-Being of Elephants in Captivity.

The AZA has raised its standards for elephants in the face of new research and escalating criticism, but experts say standards are still far too low. Raising them further and too quickly would force most of its member zoos to spend tens of millions of dollars to meet the requirements of elephant keeping.

A recent series by a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist at the Seattle Times suggests elephants are dying out in American zoos.

For every elephant born in a U.S. accredited zoo, another two on average die, the newspaper found in a review of deaths since 1962. The infant mortality rate of zoo elephants is triple of that in the wild, the investigation found. The AZA disputes the analysis, saying it doesn’t account for advancement in care standards over the past several decades. The association has consistently criticized researchers and experts who suggest zoo elephants live shorter lives than their counterparts in the wild; its own analyses conclude both have similar life spans.

In the past decade, the AZA has gone to great lengths to battle criticism about elephants in captivity and spin the story in its members’ favour. The association’s present-day elephant strategy was carved out in 2005 during a private meeting of AZA-accredited zoo officials at Disney World in Florida, and attended by directors from the Toronto Zoo, Quebec’s Granby Zoo and the Calgary Zoo, among others.

Documents reviewed at the meeting, first obtained by the Seattle Times, reveal the AZA acknowledged its zoo elephant population had declined to “crisis” levels and would be unsustainable unless member zoos ramped up elephant breeding programs. To manage the crisis, officials agreed to speak and act with a “unified voice” on all elephant matters — no public dissent allowed — and to state publicly that the AZA-accredited zoo elephant population was “thriving.” Animal rights advocates who disagreed with their vision would be labelled anti-zoo “extremists.”

Two years later, the AZA and the communications firm it hired to manage the elephant crisis would win a public relations award for tipping public opinion in its favour.

Canadian zoo professionals who attended the 2005 meeting say there was nothing misleading about the elephant strategy and that plans for the future were made with the best interests of elephants in mind. AZA spokesman Steve Feldman said the PR campaign was an “effective effort” to defend its members from “spurious accusations” and “attacks from animal rights extremists.”

But it wouldn’t be long before zoos would again come under fire.

Whether you love Bob Barker or hate him, it’s fair to say things got weird when the man with the TV grin, the California tan and the shock of white hair came to town. In April 2011, as the city geared up for a long-anticipated decision on the future of the elephants, the former game show host and animal rights activist met with Toronto city councillors and weighed in on the great debate. “They’ll be far healthier at a sanctuary,” he told the city.

Barker offered up his own funds to get Toronto’s elephants to PAWS, a promise that would eventually balloon to an $880,000 commitment. Some would come to resent his involvement, arguing councillors and the public were influenced by his celebrity rather than facts.

A few weeks after Barker’s visit, Toronto Zoo CEO John Tracogna delivered a carefully worded staff report to the board of management. Given the funds required to build appropriate facilities — about $16.5 million — and future operating costs of nearly $1 million per year, the report concluded the price tag to keep the elephants was too steep for the cash-strapped zoo.

In a section titled “Animal Welfare,” the report stressed the decision was a financial one, not an admission that elephants don’t belong at the zoo. “Therefore,” the report declared, “the recommendation to phase out the Toronto Zoo’s elephant program is not an ethical issue.” The statement contrasts with positions taken by directors of some zoos — Calgary and Detroit, to name two — that have broken away from AZA’s “unified voice” and declared publicly that decisions to close their elephant exhibits were made for the welfare of the elephants.

Tracogna’s report went on to say zoo staff would work with the AZA’s elephant advisory group to find a location for Toronto’s pachyderms. “It should be emphasized,” he advised the board, “that the AZA ... will only recommend that our elephants be transferred to an AZA accredited facility.”

In the days leading up to the board meeting where the future of the elephants would be voted on, the AZA and the closely linked Canada’s Accredited Zoos and Aquariums wrote their own appeals. “The only way to assure that these elephants receive the highest level of care is to send them to an AZA-accredited facility,” AZA executive director Kristin Vehrs said in a May 10 letter to the board. “Non-accredited zoos and private elephant facilities” — “so-called sanctuaries,” she added — “are not an appropriate alternative.”

The clash between zoos and sanctuaries stems from a collision of two fundamental belief systems. Zoos conduct research, fund and participate in conservation programs, and charge admission to folks who want to see their animal collections. Sanctuaries like PAWS operate as retirement homes for aging and ailing animals, and keep their elephants, for the most part, out of the public eye. But the key element over which the two sides disagree is breeding. The zoo industry, led by AZA, breeds its pachyderms in an effort to create a self-sustaining population for North American zoo collections. PAWS is against breeding elephants in captivity.

The May 12 Toronto Zoo board meeting brought zoo staffers and AZA officials together in one room with Zoocheck Canada — a Toronto-based animal rights organization that would come to play a key role in the elephant transfer — and representatives from PAWS, the California sanctuary.

Ed Stewart, co-founder of PAWS, attempted to defend his sanctuary, which zoo staff, councillors and reporters had been describing as an “unaccredited” facility, even though it is accredited by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries. PAWS has never sought accreditation from the AZA, Stewart tried to explain, because it is not a zoo or an aquarium.

Stewart’s message didn’t translate.

“When I retire and my kids are deciding what to do with me, I want to go to a licensed nursing home,” zoo vice-chair and city councillor Paul Ainslie said at the meeting.

In the end, the zoo board voted to close the elephant exhibit and send Iringa, Thika and Toka to an AZA-accredited zoo, as recommended by Toronto Zoo staff and the AZA. A sanctuary would only be considered if a suitable accredited facility could not be found, which officials noted was unlikely.

It was after 10 p.m. on Oct. 25, 2011, when Toronto city councillor Michelle Berardinetti stood up in council chambers and presented a surprise motion to send the elephants to PAWS.

Six months had passed since the board decision, winter was fast approaching and the Toronto Zoo had not yet come up with a viable plan, though word was spreading that zoo officials were in talks with an AZA-accredited U.S. facility that was willing to take the elephants. Berardinetti’s motion would derail that plan.

Arguing that getting rid of the elephants now could save the city money, and suggesting another winter at the zoo could mean another dead elephant, the Scarborough Southwest councillor delivered an impassioned speech to her colleagues. The motion to send the elephants to PAWS was approved in a 31-4 vote — and that’s when the you-know-what really hit the fan.

Zookeepers were flabbergasted. “City politicians allowed an animal rights group to take away my right to have a say where the elephants that I cared for over 16 years spend their lives,” Vernon Presley, the zoo’s head elephant handler, wrote on Facebook. “I’VE EARNED IT YOU HAVEN’T!!!”

Another zoo employee wrote that councillors were “idiots” who had “no f’in clue about what they are talking about.”

City councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker called the backlash a “guerrilla campaign” by a “rogue staff.” He and Berardinetti stressed that council had the authority to take the decision out of the zoo’s hands because the elephants are city property. Some elephant handlers and other zoo advocates accused the councillors of being “puppets” under the control of “ARAs” — animal rights activists.

In mid-November, the keepers presented a petition to city council with 1,100 names on it, asking them to allow “the elephant experts at the Toronto Zoo” to continue their research and decide which facility is best for the elephants. Councillors took a lot of heat for the surprise motion, but they had the advantage of having some of the world’s leading elephant experts on their side, including Cynthia Moss, Joyce Poole and Keith Lindsay.

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Lindsay, an elephant ecologist with the Amboseli Trust for Elephants in Nairobi, Kenya, wrote council to offer his view that sanctuaries are the only facilities in North America with conditions approaching what animals would experience in the wild, “while no zoos, accredited or otherwise, do at the moment.” His colleagues agreed.

Zookeepers have a view that is often coloured by “issues of tradition and status,” wrote Peter Stroud, a former zookeeper and director.

“That they rightly feel a powerful sense of responsibility is not in doubt. That they are in a position to always know what is right and best for their animals, is patently untrue.”

As the debate waged on, Stewart made a trip to Toronto with his PAWS veterinarian to meet Iringa, Toka and Thika — a visit planned as per a Toronto Zoo board directive. But when he arrived, the zoo CEO told him it wasn’t a good time to see the elephants after all. Emotions were high and Tracogna said he didn’t know how staff would react if they saw Stewart there.

In mid-December, amid escalating criticism of the antics of angry elephant keepers and accusations of foot-dragging, the zoo called a press conference. Tracogna told the public he regretted “inappropriate remarks” posted on Facebook by staffers who oppose the move and said the zoo was co-operating fully with PAWS in preparations for the elephant transfer. An early-spring departure deadline was set. It would be the first of many.

By the time the snow melted in 2012, three elephant-sized travelling crates had arrived in Toronto. Everything appeared to be on track.

Behind the scenes, however, relationships were deteriorating as the zoo began to investigate what officials would claim was a “tuberculosis problem” at PAWS. Throughout the spring, PAWS alleged the zoo’s due diligence investigation had become a “witch hunt,” while the zoo claimed the sanctuary wasn’t forthcoming with information.

In April, weeks before the elephants were scheduled to depart, the AZA revoked the Toronto Zoo’s accreditation, setting off another wave of criticism about the council decision. The association was quick to say the decision had nothing to do with its position on sanctuaries; it happened because the council vote contravened its governance rules, which state that decisions about animal collections must be made by handlers.

But industry insiders believe the move was a warning shot to other zoos considering sending their elephants to sanctuaries. “It was a crude political ploy,” says long-time zoo director David Hancocks. “And that’s all it was.”

In May, PAWS received an unusual request from the zoo — tuberculosis status reports on all wildlife found on the 930-hectare site, including deer and stray cats. The zoo’s wish list went above and beyond the requirements of the legal agreement between PAWS and the zoo. “No request like that has ever been made of us — or anyone else,” said an angry Ed Stewart. In one closed-door meeting, a senior zoo official even suggested PAWS co-owner Pat Derby might herself have tuberculosis.

The zoo would eventually hold a press conference, in September, to announce they were delaying the elephant transfer until 2013 because of “serious concerns” about TB at the sanctuary.

In the lead-up to the second vote, zoo staffers seemed confident council would do what they felt was the right thing. “Hoping to finally be able to take a breath ... let the truth prevail please!” elephant handler Heather Kalka wrote on Twitter.

They would be disappointed. On Nov. 27, council reaffirmed its decision, voting 32-8 to send the elephants to PAWS.

Iringa’s ears flap gently in the winter wind as she sways from side to side in the elephant enclosure, her trunk skimming the ground as she shifts her weight from left to right. The temperature sits just above 5 C, which means the elephants are allowed outside today. As she rocks, Iringa stares blankly at the few visitors who have come to see her. Her movement is a dance of sorts, slow and rhythmic. Sad, some might say. In fact,a handful of visitors make this observation during a one-hour period on a weekday afternoon in January: She looks sad.

Elephant ecologists say this rocking motion is a sign of psychological distress seen frequently in captive elephants. But even this conclusion is political. To some, yes, Iringa looks sad. Others would argue we can’t possibly interpret the thoughts of an elephant. Maybe she’s happy and we just don’t know it. Maybe she’s having a bad day. Maybe she’s sick of being at the centre of a never-ending story.

“I’m not looking in the past,” Tracogna said in a recent interview. “I’m looking forward.”

This is the official message of the zoo: The council direction to move the animals to PAWS will be followed and a new transfer team is working diligently toward a spring deadline. “Elephants were a chapter in the history of the zoo, like many other chapters that were written before,” the CEO said. In other words, it’s time to move on.

But can his staff let it go? Will they?

On a private Facebook page where Toronto Zoo supporters and some keepers share information and air grievances, there has been chatter about filing a complaint with the OSPCA about the transfer plan or seeking “federal interference.”

Last month, a week before Christmas, a dejected troupe of Toronto Zoo employees attendeda zoo board meeting.

As has become the norm when elephants are on the agenda, emotions were high. At one point, Councillor De Baeremaeker scolded one senior zoo official for “heckling.”

Later, on a public Facebook page run by some elephant keepers and their supporters, handler Alison Babin shared the latest news.

“Toronto elephants on track for April departure,” read the headline of an article she posted.

Within minutes, a member of the anti-PAWS faction had responded: “Or not.”

Elephant deaths

Seven elephants have died at the Toronto Zoo since 1984. In 2008, Zoocheck Canada obtained the zoo’s necropsy results:

TW, 2 days old, died in 1984 from stomach and bowel problems.

Tantor, 20, died in 1989 from heart failure after surgery to extract an infected tusk.

Toronto, 10, died in 1994 from toxemia.

Patsy, 39, euthanized in 2006 due to chronic pain from arthritis and foot infections.

Tequila, 38, found lying on an electric fence in 2008. The necropsy report was inconclusive.

Tessa, 40, died in 2009. She fell against an electric fence after being hit by another elephant during a struggle over hay. The necropsy report indicates she died from attempts to get her on her feet and chronic wasting syndrome.