Please act to stop the Dallas Zoo from sending Jenny, the elephant, to a small amusement park in Mexico.

On Tuesday, the Dallas Morning News ran a story entitled “Dallas Zoo’s lone elephant to be moved to wildlife refuge in Mexico” about the zoo’s controversial decision to dump Jenny, a 31-year-old African elephant, at a safari amusement park in Mexico . Since the death of Jenny’s elephant companion, Keke (39), in May, Concerned Citizens for Jenny has urged the zoo to send Jenny to The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee.

The Mexican park offers an unnatural, confining exhibit of only 4.9 acres –a small fraction of the 2,700-acre Elephant Sanctuary, where Jenny would share a spacious, 300-acre natural habitat with three other African elephants.

It is shocking that the Dallas Zoo is moving Jenny to a distant facility in a foreign country where she will not be protected by U.S. animal welfare and anti-cruelty laws, especially when there is a nearby U.S. facility with hundreds of acres that is prepared to take her.

After being torn from her mother’s side in Africa at the age of two, she was forced into seven years of brutal training. Jenny has been at the Dallas Zoo for 22 years, where she has had a traumatic and troubled stay. Between 1996 and 2001, the Dallas Zoo medicated her with the tranquilizer
Acepromazine because of aggression and self-mutilating behaviors. Federal regulators characterized Jenny’s long-term treatment with this psychotropic drug as “highly unconventional.”

While African elephants in the wild are known to reproduce into their 50s and live into their 60s, in zoos they commonly die decades short of their natural time. In short, the Dallas Zoo’s decision is a matter of life and death for Jenny.

THE ZOO MAY SHIP JENNY TO MEXICO BEFORE THEY THINK WE ORGANIZE ACTION TO
STOP THEM. PLEASE ACT FOR JENNY TODAY!

1. Contact Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert and the Dallas City Council before their July 1 recess. (See talking points below)

Telephone Mayor Leppert and politely urge him to send Jenny to a sanctuary in the USA. Whether or not you live in Dallas, making a polite phone call is the most important thing you can do. If you called once, please find a reason to call again. Ask everyone you know to also call. Here is Mayor
Leppert’s contact information:

Mayor Tom Leppert
Dallas City Hall
1500 Marilla Street, Room 5EN
Dallas, TX 75201-6390
Main Phone: (214) 670-4054
Fax: (214) 670-0646
tom.leppert@dallascityhall.com

If you live in Dallas, telephone your city council representative. Please politely but firmly tell your council representative, and everyone else to whom you speak in your council office, that you want the council office to record your strong objection to Jenny being transferred to Mexico and that you want her sent to a sanctuary in the USA. Please do not allow them to convince you to call the Zoo instead. The City Council is the ultimate decision maker, not the Zoo. Click here for Council contact info.

Whether or not you live in Dallas, email the Dallas Mayor and the City Council ALL at one time by copying and pasting the web address immediately below into your search field (if you click on it, you will email the mayor alone):
http://www.ci.dallas.tx.us/forms/mcc/MCC_Mail_Form.htm

2. Write a letter to the editor today!
We must bring Jenny’s plight to the attention of the public by gaining access to the media. Letters to the editor is our best option, as we do not have a PR firm like the Zoo. Please write a letter to the editor of the Dallas Morning News objecting to Jenny’s transfer to an amusement park in Mexico and describing why Jenny’s life would be better in a sanctuary than in a Mexican safari park that operates outside U.S. animal welfare and anti-cruelty laws. Letters should be between 50 and 200 words. Letters are selected for publication based on their clarity and brevity. They require the writer’s name, city and telephone number.

Send your letter objecting to Jenny’s transfer to Mexico to:

Letters From Readers
The Dallas Morning News
Box 655237
Dallas , Texas 75265
Or submit your letter online at http://www.dallasnews.com/cgi-bin/lettertoed.cgi

TALKING POINTS

1. There will be NO U.S. Animal Welfare or Anti-Cruelty Laws covering Jenny in Mexico.

2. The sanctuaries who will accept Jenny have thousands of acres versus 4.9 acres at the Safari Amusement Park. The 4.9 acres is likely subdivided so Jenny may actually have far less space than that. However, the Elephant Sanctuary in TN ( http://www.elephants.com/) is a state of the art, 2,700 acre elephant refuge. It is the largest natural habitat refuge in the world and has a four star charity rating from Charity Navigator. The PAWS Sanctuary ( http://www.pawsweb.org/) in California has hundreds of acres and is also a state of the art, internationally recognized facility. Both U.S. sanctuaries are excellent and Jenny should be able to retire to one of these.

3. After you express your opinion, ask for a copy of the performance and quality of care standards the Dallas Zoo put in place for Jenny at the Safari Amusement Park. Note: We bet there probably are no such standards. The Zoo is claiming the Safari Park is AZA accredited, which means very little. AZA is just a trade group and is not a guarantee of quality. AZA facilities have been cited for breeches of USDA standards. The Zoo hired a PR firm to spin this story to the media, but the truth is still the truth.
Jenny’s story

IMPORTANT! If you live in Dallas and will consent to your name being listed as a member of Concerned Citizens for Jenny, please email your name, address, phone and in which Dallas district you live to Margaret Morin,Chair, Concerned Citizens for Jenny,
ASAP: dogs_good@yahoo.com or (972) 578-0370