LAHORE: Saturday was a sad day at the Lahore zoo when it lost its most precious elephant, Suzi, after an association of 29 years.

Suzi -- a female African elephant -- died at the zoo around 7am on Saturday after going through many hard and harsh years of captivity. She was brought to the zoo in May 1988. She was 36.

The Lahore Zoo director Muhammad Shafqat (who was suspended from service later in the day over Suzi’s death) told Dawn that Suzi was not feeling well for the last few days. About the probable death cause (since postmortem report is yet to be issued), Mr Shafqat said Suzi had gone overweight, one of the “common reasons of mortality among elephants”.

Director suspended

He said another factor that might have led to her death was age.

According to Mr Shafqat, in captive breeding elephants survive only for 17 to 18 years but Suzi played a long inning of 29 years. “For the last three or four days she could not sit, and once she sat, she could not stand again,” the director said.

He said since Suzi was the only elephant at the zoo, loneliness too could be a factor in her death. He said as elephants lived in groups, next time zoo would try to buy at least a pair to avoid this factor. He added that international animal rights groups hurled a lot of criticism at the administrations of the zoos where single elephants were kept in captivity.

Technical Adviser to the World Wide Fund for Nature, Uzma Khan, lashed out at the Lahore Zoo administration while commenting on the death of Suzi. Ms Khan rejected the zoo’s plea that Suzi had gone “overweight”.

According to her, at the Lahore Zoo welfare of animals was not a priority. It also lacked professional elephant keepers, she added. “I saw Suzi last Saturday at the zoo and she was fine. However, I had noticed some medicine was applied to her feet”.

Ms Khan said leading cause of mortality among the captive elephants was shackling of their feet on the concrete floor and the practice was common in Lahore the Zoo. This shackling led to a host of problems, mainly arthritis, she said. Ms Khan said during a past meeting she had raised the issue of shackling of elephant at the zoo in the presence of chief minister’s son MNA Hamza Shahbaz but “to no avail”.

She opposed reintroducing elephants at the zoo, because of lack of space and shackling factor. She also referred to her two articles published by an English daily where she raised the shackling issue.

Published in Dawn, May 14th, 2017