← Global Rumblings Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript59 lines
- [00:19]
Nadia Mari
Hello and welcome to Global Sanctuary for Elephants podcast. Global Rumblings. Global Sanctuary for Elephants, or GSE for short, is a non profit organization with a mission to create vast safe spaces for captive elephants where they are able to heal physically and emotionally, often from very traumatic pasts. I'm your host, Nadia Mari and I'll be taking you to the lush jungle of the Mato Grosso region in central Brazil, home of GSE's initial project, Elephant Sanctuary Brazil, currently home to five female Asian elephants, lovingly referred to as the girls. Hello, everyone. Welcome back and thank you for tuning in again this week for a new exciting episode of Global Rumblings. It's great to have you with us. We'll be talking more about Pocha and Guijamina, the mother and daughter duo rescued from Mendoza in Argentina to the sanctuary in May 2022. So let's head over to the lush jungle of elephant sanctuary Brazil to say hi to Kat and Scott. Hi, you two. Good afternoon.
- [01:19]
Scott
Hi, Nadia.
- [01:20]
Kat
Hey, Nadia, how are you?
- [01:22]
Nadia Mari
I'm fine. Enjoying some nice hot weather here.
- [01:25]
Kat
So we are enjoying non lush time of year. We are in the heart of dry season. Fires are around so we're always a little bit watchful. And we have a huge windstorm that just popped up, so we're gonna be a little alert, so making sure everything seems okay.
- [01:43]
Nadia Mari
Okay. Yeah. Good that we haven't got a video podcast because the listeners would see that you actually looking out to your left to your view. But you have got very pretty profiles as well, so that's okay.
- [01:56]
Kat
It's all about the pretty profiles.
- [01:58]
Nadia Mari
So last week we were all over the place talking about pocha and guiamina, but also about Tammy, a little bit about palooza. Sadly, an elephant in Argentina that didn't make it to the sanctuary. We also talked about Kenya, the female Asian. No, the female African elephant at the Mendoza Zoo. So today, for my own sanity, but maybe also for the sanity of our listeners, we will try to keep it streamlined to poacher and gujamina. We left off last time with you talking about the training and how difficult it was to separate them because they'd never been separated before. So maybe for listeners, but also for supporters who do not know, how do you train an elephant?
- [02:41]
Kat
Well, we will do our best to keep this as streamlined as possible for you.
- [02:44]
Scott
And I was going to say. Well, that's an easy question to answer.
- [02:48]
Kat
Yeah, I mean, each different with specifically to that question about how to train elephant, you know, with protected contact. It's really different with each individual. You know, it starts off of just trying to help them understand what language you're trying to speak, you know, trying to figure out how they're going to learn, how they're going to hear, how do they perceive your words, how do they perceive your cues, you know, the guidance that you're giving them.
- [03:13]
Scott
It's very similar to dog training, dog clicker training. It is rewards based. It is trying to get them to understand that the clicker is the exact pinpoint moment that they've done something positive or what you're asking for, it's finding what motivates it's whether it's an elephant or a dog, what motivates them with training, whether it's praise, food, reward, what specific type of food. I mean, it's all of that that you do with dogs just shifted to a slightly bigger animal that you have to take a different approach with because of safety and intelligence.
- [03:50]
Kat
Yeah. And the big factor on this one was the accessibility issue, which was a challenge for their trainers to figure out how to be able to use the tools that we typically use when elephants are actually below you versus being on the same plane. And there's only one area or two small areas where they were kind of on the same level as the elephants. And even those areas were really restricted to about two and a half meters.
- [04:12]
Scott
Yeah. And you're supposed to be doing full lean ins because you have to do injections and all of this stuff. And neither of those spaces really allowed for that. So I mean, nothing about training the two of them was ideal, unfortunately.
- [04:25]
Kat
And a lean in is when they present their body to the side, the side of their body to the fence, so they're kind of parallel to the fence or the barrier that you're using. And they, I want to use Portuguese words, they press their body up against that, that, that parallel barrier. Um, and it's, it's a, a position that you use as a foundation for everything else. But then how do you get that position when you don't have the space to create that for them to be able to do the proper cue, the, the proper guidance that you would do for that. So it was really challenging from a, from a trainer perspective. Uh, but it starts slow. It starts just trying to get them to understand what it means and then slowly get them understand what it is that you're trying to get them to do. Often changing directions. And the caregivers had a lot of restrictions there because of the elephant's attention span as well, you know, and it was really, a lot of times you already have a facility that can separate their elephants. And when you can't separate the two, and they really couldn't, even with the gate that was broken that we talked about before, they couldn't separate them. Well, and then they'd be concerned and somebody would be possibly jealous of Mom's getting more food than I am. I'm going to leave my person and I'm going to go back to them. So she would.
- [05:34]
Scott
And even the outside space wasn't big enough to be able to separate them because of how small the area was. And then the one side did have a gate, but on the other side of the gate was Tammy. So it's not like you can use that gate for anything because you have a big male elephant that's living in that space. So they're just. I mean, it was. It was definitely trying to figure out how to make the best of a not so good situation.
- [06:02]
Kat
A lot of times I do what's called ab training, which is moving elephant from point A to point B, you know, people calling them in different directions. And you can do that with both elephants. And sometimes what you can do, and I think they're doing this with the two Africans at Buenos Aires right now, where they will be positioned with each trainer. And then you basically tell the elephants to switch and they go to a different trainer. So you get them idea of going from one place to another. But again, you have such a small place for poaching gizmina that you really didn't have the space to be able to do that efficiently and everything is above them, which made it all the more difficult. So a lot of challenges that presented, uh, but it was just slow, tedious, very intermittent because the caregivers, the trainers, only had a certain amount of time they could be there. Uh, they're trying to train the team there as well. So not only trying to train the elephants, but trying to train the people, which didn't always work well for them to carry it on themselves afterwards, because it is very nuanced, especially in. With two elephants like poaching. Gizamina Dijemina is very detailed. You know, we weren't involved directly with that training, but when she came here, she's incredibly nuanced with her level of attention, and she is watching everything you do. And if you actually make a mistake as a trainer, she'll say the next day, wait a minute, you told me to do this. And I tried to say, but I made a mistake. That was wrong. She's like, but you told me, yes, yesterday. I didn't exactly Tell you, yes, of course. I mean, there are elephants. They're one of the most remarkable minds in the world. You know, they remember everything and they are. She is so acute with her attention to detail that she is actually difficult to train because you have to stay much further in front of her than you normally would with an elephant and normally with an elephant with. When you're trying to change, shift a behavior or shape a behavior, you start with step one and then you may take five baby steps to get to step two. With her it's step one. Sometimes one baby step in the middle and then already step the next step. You know, it's, it's, there's no gradual transition. It is a quick jumps from one to the next. And if you don't stay in front of her on that, she either gets bored or gets confused because she doesn't understand why you're trying to do the same thing too many times.
- [08:11]
Nadia Mari
I was watching some videos in preparation and I was looking at your fundraiser called Horizons and Hope and just had to, when reading the text, just remember how, how sterile her, her environment was. And, and I really had to think about who in their right mind at the zoo at the time thought it was totally okay to bring in pocha knowing that she would, you know, mate with, with Tammy and then condemn the offspring, in this case guiamina and Pocha, to, to such a sterile life. You know, I, I was thinking of various adjectives which are podcast and family friendly, but apart from selfish, I couldn't really think of, I couldn't think of one. But yeah, that was.
- [08:51]
Scott
The whole Sue Zoo setup is really weird and I'm not. But the idea behind the way the enclosures was designed was actually a positive one. It was at a time where most animals were in tiny little spaces behind bars and that was how animals were kept. I mean, you know, this is way back when. So the idea behind their enclosure was to give them a space where they didn't have to be behind bars. So they were looking at creating a more expansive, not as limiting, not prison esque enclosure. But of course didn't really think it all the way through from the perspective of instead of having bars in front of them, they have a giant wall and they can't really see anything. So it came from a place of trying to do something better, but kind of tanked in reality, unfortunately.
- [09:52]
Kat
And if you look at Mosus 50 years ago, it's exactly what Scott's saying. I mean, it was tiny little, you know, barred enclosures. You know, several animals weren't even allowed outside, they only had indoor exhibits. You know, a lot started to change, but you know, they, you know, in the last 30 years, tremendous amount have changed with zoo exhibits and designs. That doesn't make them enough still. But if you do a comparison 50 years ago to zoos basically around the world, I mean, it was pretty barbaric. And that pit, as horrific as it is, was actually a positive step at.
- [10:24]
Scott
That point because I did ask, of course, I was like, who designs this? And I was educated on why and how.
- [10:34]
Kat
And to go to the next layer of your question, which was thinking about, you know, possibly breeding and having offspring sequestered to that space, that's not even a consideration at that point. You know, it's, hey, we have a baby. It's not a sequestered baby. We have a baby. Look how brilliant it is. Look how happy mom is. And we were able to reproduce in captivity. Isn't this amazing? You know, conservation efforts, education efforts, you know, without even the consideration of the impact on that life.
- [11:02]
Scott
You're talking about like 40 years ago. I mean, Tess was the first vast habitat sanctuary for elephants. And when was it?
- [11:09]
Kat
30 years ago?
- [11:09]
Scott
30 years ago. So, you know, it's. People can look at things now from the perspective of knowing what is offered now, knowing there are these sanctuaries that offer lovely homes for elephants and so on and so forth, but, you know, that was not a consideration or anything that existed back then. So creating an exhibit that wasn't a little padded cell essentially was an accomplishment.
- [11:36]
Kat
And because, Nadia, you so politely asked us not to go into tangents, I'm going to go on a tangent. You know, we're going to fast forward to, you know, let's go in this day and age, you know, what was it 10 years ago, not even that, that they imported all those African elephants from Swaziland, you know, or there's two, two different imports. I don't remember which one is which, but I remember the one was, it was 11 elephants, I think, to the San Diego Wild Animal Park. You know, hey, notoriously, we have six acres of space for them while breeding happens and we're going to have a multi generational herd. Well, you can only go that far for so long. You ended up with, was it 16 elephants or 12 elephants on six acres? I remember 16, 19 elephants on six acres. Well, they can't. That's not sustainable. You know, we're going to have conflict with the elephants and of course they're going to keep breeding. So you're going to have more offspring where do they go? Several of the elephants are sequestered now to half acre enclosures, you know, in zoos that are AZA accredited zoos, you know, so there's no consideration what's gonna happen in two or three years. Even now we're not talking 50 years ago, we're talking now. There's no consideration with these breeding programs, what's gonna happen to these offspring or the next ones after that. You know, it is, hey, let's just make a bunch of babies because they.
- [12:45]
Scott
Make money, especially there because they had a lot of males, they had almost exclusively male offspring and then they had to start closing them into different yards because of socialization issues and so on and so forth. And then almost all of the males got sent to other facilities even though they say they're doing it to keep a multi generational herd. But I mean they just don't. Males are more effort. Groups of males are significantly more effort. There is a zoo in the US that has exclusively males, but that was a first and that was within the past 10 years that they did that.
- [13:17]
Kat
So in this language of the multi generational herd, that wasn't even until a couple years ago, you know, a few, I say a handful of years ago that they were using that language because it's pretty, you know, it's the same.
- [13:30]
Nadia Mari
In Japan, there was four elephants imported from Myanmar. Three females, one male. Yes, the, the new zoo enclosure of the Fukuoka Zoo might be very big, but what four elephants need plus the offspring is not what they need. Or there was a recently a forest elephant which is now pregnant and they're thinking great in Hiroshima in Japan. But yeah, you know, what's going to happen to the, what's going to happen to the baby? But we are, yes, we are. We are not streamline.
- [13:57]
Scott
We're off on a tangent, but that was, that was, that was my fault.
- [14:01]
Nadia Mari
A big one. Sorry. So while I was watching these videos, I did see that in March 2021 you actually brought the crates to, to Argentina. Took about a week for them to get there. And you also had said in your post that the crates were arriving a little bit earlier to give poaching we amina more time for training and for separation. But they weren't actually rescued until May 2022. So from March 21, that's 14 months. What happened? Apart from. Yes, I read there was still some Covid issues and also then something about the winter which meant that there was a cold spill, that the blood circulation in elephant ears isn't as good. So you had More problems drawing blood. But even so, 14 months, what, what the bleep happened?
- [14:49]
Kat
Let's put 14 months in perspective. When we have rescues that have been working around the world, you know, that have been going on for 15 years to get elephants out of these places, you know, there's 14 months may sound like a lot, but in this world where you actually don't normally hear about the rescues until the day of or the week of, you know, because people aren't so transparent, they don't let you know the whole story. You know, they don't let you know what's actually happening. And because we are transparent, we let you know, you guys, it, it does seem like a longer journey, but a lot of these, these processes are years in the making. But this, you know, from the transport crate arrival there, it was a challenging time. It was Covid. It was the still limitation of access for people to do training. It was the caregivers, they were not continuing the training they were supposed to. So when the trainers went back, the elephants had actually made no progress.
- [15:38]
Scott
In most cases, they had regressed from what their progress was because with elephants, oftentimes, if you're not going to train properly, it just makes everything worse.
- [15:48]
Kat
But then we add another layer of human selfishness and greed. That actually was a huge element of the issue, and that was no one really gave a. These elephants. You know, the reality is no one cared except for the zoo and the government saying, hey, we want to give these elephants a better life. You know, there were some small groups that were trying to do something, but there was nobody in Argentina that was saying, hey, let's make a huge positive difference. I said, no one. A very select handful full of people that were devoted advocates for, for progressive change. But once they started getting publicity for these moves and after Mara got relocated, there ended up being a group in Argentina that wanted to keep the elephants in Argentina for themselves. They're Argentine elephants. They need to stay in Argentina. No, they're not Argentine elephants. They are Asian elephants, actually. You know, and they have been living in Argentina, but they've been living in, you know, squalor in Argentina for years. And no one's really made a positive change. So we're here to help. Oh, no, we don't want them to go. We want them to stay here as well.
- [16:46]
Scott
And it wasn't just them. I mean, there were elephants at a different zoo. They had two elephants die in their 20s and nobody said anything, nobody tried to do anything for them. Nobody. Again, yes, there were small, small groups of people Trying to do things for these elephants for a long time.
- [17:03]
Kat
And this is a notoriously horrific zoo that was really bad.
- [17:06]
Scott
But the people who stepped in all of a sudden and were like, no, these are our elephants. They didn't do anything for those elephants. These poor elephants who died in their 20s, nobody cared. And then all of a sudden, now everybody wants the elephants to stay in.
- [17:18]
Kat
Argentina and they wanted to move into a sanctuary that was designed for a few small animals there they showed fencing. It was going to be for basically cow type fencing. Their barn was. You could live disposed with no reinforcement structure around. It would have all been in a big elephant toy. They want to do all the elephants together. And because the people that were associated with that had high level political contacts, that just turned into just a bit of a nightmare for a while.
- [17:47]
Scott
And by all elephants together, the two female Asians, the one male Asian and the one female African wanted to mix them all in the same enclosure.
- [17:56]
Kat
Yeah, there was no. Yeah. So none of it was logical thinking. It was, you know, more selfish greed. We want the publicity, we want the exposure. We want to keep them in Argentina. So with that, there were some false claims at the sanctuary. There was claims all over the Internet that Mara had died. And all of our listeners know that Mar is in the not dead. Mara is alive and well. And that came up because we actually showed the world that Mara was sick when she was losing weight and talked about her digestive issues and talked about complexities of. Of recovery with elephants in captivity and the long term impact, long term chronic impact. So we shared that. And of course people took advantage of that, took advantage of that and said mars dead. Even actually posting pictures online that were supposedly Mara laying down dead.
- [18:39]
Nadia Mari
Oh, I remember the pictures of electrocuted elephants in India that electrocuted on the tracks. And then they like photoshopped it. Oh my gosh.
- [18:47]
Scott
It was actually a lightning strike. Because we were first looked up the photos and they clearly cropped out this mahout that's in the same photo. And they said, no, it's Mara, we have an inside source, she's dead.
- [18:59]
Kat
So we actually had on more than one occasion, we had to have the local authorities and each one came out separately, each of the three local divisions and had to count our elephants to make sure we had all elephants accounted for.
- [19:10]
Nadia Mari
Seriously.
- [19:10]
Kat
And they came out multiple times. And then in associating with this, there was another claim of, you know, wrongful deaths that happen here and elephants with the disease, that there's no indication of them ever having this disease. I mean all these things that went on and even after we proved all of that, then the Argentine government who was connected to there's a sanctuary that wanted to keep the elephants, wanted to do an investigation themselves here, which isn't legitimate, you know, so they wanted to actually do a full on investigation which made no sense because all of our local authorities, all of our Brazilian authorities said hey, there's no indication of any of this. Why are we taking any further? But to appease your neighbor in government, they said, yes, we'll, we'll set up a visit. And they came out here for a visit and we showed them everything and they went back and made a report and basically completely, I mean it was, it's a report that was full of slander. So we actually didn't reply right away. We, we went through various channel channels waiting for this reply, writing for their. Waiting for them to lose credibility because there's really no merit with it. But we couldn't push forward too fast, we couldn't fight too fast because of the political element of it. So we had to wait our time. And then after a little while, when they started to push even further and continue to deny the renewal of the import, the export permit, because that was one of the things that happened in that time frame is Trish and Ingo were there and they were not able to get the elephants loaded within the. Once they were liberated to go there because of COVID and once we got certain test results done, they went there, they couldn't get the elephants loaded in that small window at time that we had before their export permit was expired. During the renewal of the export permit is when all of this really started coming to head. And that's when we had this investigation. And then we actually went in association with other organizations, went into a social media and media campaign showing the truth of what this visit was and showing the reality of what is the reality of what they saw versus what the report tried to claim and basically discredit everything in the report. And within I think 72 hours they had admitted the new export permit.
- [21:21]
Nadia Mari
So much. And you said it. So much time was lost. Time again, such precious time.
- [21:25]
Scott
Yeah, I mean it helped that the person who is essentially responsible for not approving these permits, his contact information was included in multiple things that were shared publicly about. If you are unhappy, please write to. And one of the things that happened was he contacted us and was like, make it stop. It's like, well, easy enough, just approve the permits that are supposed to be.
- [21:52]
Nadia Mari
I remember many tweets we have to.
- [21:54]
Kat
In all of this, we have to put credit back where it is due. And that is the government of Mendoza, the environmental minister and the director of the zoo. They never lost sight of the big picture. They never fell prey to the political pressures that were put on them to try to cancel this relocation.
- [22:13]
Scott
It would have been easier for them to just send them to that other place. Even though it was trash, I mean, it still would have been an easier way for them to go.
- [22:21]
Kat
Yeah. And that director that was there at the time, she's no longer there. When she stepped in during this transition, she actually had civil lawsuits against her directly, personally, not associated with a zoo for wrongful deaths and other things that all things that happened before she even became the director of the zoo. And during her tenure there, they were doing all kinds of things with the other animals, with people within the zoo that were trying to stop some of the transfers, of putting. Putting animals into quarantine areas. So they had like a chimpanzee that was in quarantine and they tried to compromise quarantine by putting. Compromise by putting other animals into the enclosure with a chimpanzee.
- [23:03]
Scott
So there's people within the zoo as well that are trying to mess with all of this.
- [23:07]
Kat
I mean, it was death threats of the animals. And when Trish and Ingo were there the first time trying to relocate the elephants before their export permit expired, they were all kinds of claims of, you know, them throwing rocks at the elephant to try to get them in enclosure. I mean, it's just the list goes on and on and on of all this craziness that happened, associated with our work, but also associated with the progressive action of the zoo and the progressive action of the government to change from the zoo model to the bio park model. And again, it's just human greed, human selfishness, human arrogance, human ignorance that stopped progress for two elephants. And once again, they suffered more time at the zoo. We always go back to the same old question. And I know many people listening know now that, you know, Pocha only survived for about five months after arrival. But what would have happened for Pocha if we could have gotten her out earlier? You know, would she have had more time and would she still be alive now? You know, and all this, you know, we can't live in that past, but it is frustrating in the moment. And the other thing, in the moment, we can't always divulge everything.
- [24:15]
Scott
Oh, we could never divulge everything. Not without compromising, you know, relationships with different governmental agencies and possibly making it even worse and extending the delays. So there are often times where we can't share, not because of our own transparency, but because of putting these rescues at risk.
- [24:35]
Nadia Mari
Yeah, understandable. So 72 hours later, then the tweets and the emails and the harassment stopped, the export permits were issued. So maybe that's a good time to, to stop today's podcast and then next week we can then load. Because I also watched a video in preparation. I didn't quite know how far we were going to get today. And it was actually a very interesting way that you had to set up the crates because you couldn't put them next to each other, you had to put them behind each other. So, yeah, maybe the next time we'll, we'll catch up and talk about how you then loaded pocha and Guizi and how you set off and then arrived at the sanctuary five days later. So thanks for taking time again today, again before your lunch. So I did say had you have been eaten, had you been eating. Bob would have edited out any munching noises. But you'll probably tuck in now. So, yeah, have a great lunch, have a great afternoon. And yeah, thanks again.
- [25:40]
Kat
Thank you, Nadia. And thanks for tolerating yet more tangents of elephants, nature, Brazil, chaos.
- [25:47]
Scott
Bye bye, Nadia.
- [26:15]
Nadia Mari
Sa.
- [26:40]
Kat
It.