Despite a public outcry, in the summer of 2003, the San Diego Zoo and Lowry Park Zoo captured and imported 11 African elephants from their homeland.

The 12-year-old elephants had been roaming freely with their families on the 74,130-acre Hlane Royal National Park in Swaziland. These elephants were among the babies who witnessed the horror of their families’ being slaughtered at Kruger National Park in South Africa in 1994. At the time, the traumatized orphans were relocated to Hlane in Swaziland to live a life of freedom. After a while, they became integrated into a herd and bonded very closely with their new family members. Now that the zoos have had their way, these elephants are suffering another devastating loss and a lifelong prison sentence.

In a desperate attempt to make this crime against nature more palatable to the public, the zoos claim that they imported the elephants because the park wanted to kill them. But the truth is that the elephants never faced death because PETA offered to assist in translocating them to at least three other free-roaming areas in Africa that had agreed to accept the elephants.