Petition: Happy Died in May. Now Patty Is the Last Elephant in New York City — and She’s Alone.

For more than fifty years, Patty has lived at the Bronx Zoo. She arrived in 1973, and today, at 57, she is the only elephant left there — and the last elephant anywhere in New York City. Her companion Happy died in May, euthanized at 55 after declining organ function and arthritis. Happy was the elephant at the center of what many legal scholars call the most significant Animal rights case of the century, when the Nonhuman Rights Project argued in court that she was a person with a right to bodily liberty; New York’s highest court rejected the claim in 2022, but two judges dissented forcefully. Happy never reached a sanctuary. Patty still can. Elephants are profoundly social animals who in the wild live in family groups and travel for miles each day, and solitude is not a neutral condition for them. The Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs the zoo, has confirmed it is weighing a transfer to The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee — 3,000 acres, home to a dozen elephants — and zoo director Craig Piper and the elephant care team have already traveled there to assess it. No decision has been made. Please sign the petition urging the Bronx Zoo to let Patty finish her life among her own kind.

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The zoo’s hesitation is not unreasonable on its face: moving an elephant in her late fifties carries real veterinary risk, and WCS has said it is weighing that against the benefits. But the risk runs in both directions, and the clock only moves one way. Patty is reported to be in good health right now, which is precisely the window in which a move is safest and in which she could still get years of open space and elephant company rather than months. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums generally expects member zoos to house at least three female elephants, though a zoo left with one can apply for a variance to keep her — which is exactly the outcome this petition exists to prevent. One Green Planet has followed this zoo’s elephants for years, including the long campaign in Solitary Captivity is Torture for Happy the Elephant, and you can read the reporting on the current decision via Gothamist. Sign the petition and tell the Bronx Zoo not to let Patty become the second elephant it decides too late about.

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